What is a Fractional Chief AI Officer?
A Fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO) is a senior AI executive who leads your company's AI strategy on a part-time, retainer basis. They define your AI roadmap, identify high-leverage use cases, and oversee the design and deployment of custom AI agents, typically for $10,000 to $25,000 per month instead of the $400,000+ all-in cost of a full-time CAIO.
How much does a fractional CAIO cost compared to a full-time hire?
A fractional CAIO typically costs $10,000 to $25,000 per month, billed as a retainer. A full-time Chief AI Officer in the US averages $300,000 to $450,000 in base salary plus equity, benefits, and bonus, usually a fully-loaded cost of $450,000 to $700,000 per year. For most mid-market companies, a fractional engagement delivers the same strategic outcomes at 15 to 25 percent of the cost.
What industries do you work with?
Chief Of Life is industry agnostic. We have engagements across professional services, healthcare, financial services, legal, real estate, e-commerce, and B2B SaaS. AI strategy fundamentals transfer; what differs is the data, the workflows, and the compliance posture. We adapt to all three.
Where does our data live, and who can see it?
Your data stays in your own environment, or in a dedicated tenant we stand up for you. It is never pooled with another client's. We do not train on your data. Agents are designed to pass your security review, and we will work to whatever controls your own compliance programme requires. If you have specific certification requirements, raise them on the strategy call and we will tell you plainly what we can and cannot meet.
How long is a typical engagement?
Most engagements run 6 to 12 months. The first 30 days focus on strategy and roadmap, the next 60 days deliver an initial production agent, and months 4 through 12 expand the agent fleet and operationalize AI inside your team. Engagements are month-to-month with no long-term contracts.
Do you build the agents or just advise?
Both. The fractional CAIO sets the strategy and owns the outcome. Our team of engineers and AI specialists builds the custom agents on the infrastructure we recommend. You get one accountable senior operator, not a vendor referral chain.
What do you need from my team?
Roughly four hours in the first two weeks, access to the people who do the work so we can watch it happen, then about two hours a month. Building agents against a workflow nobody explained to us is how you end up in the 95%.
What if AI isn't the right answer for my company?
Then the roadmap says so and names it. Some workflows should be fixed with a process change or a $50 tool, not an agent. You get that in writing in the first 30 days, which is a cheaper way to find out than a year-long engagement.
How do you measure whether it worked?
Before anything is built, we agree the number: hours returned, cost per unit of work, cycle time, or revenue per employee. Every agent carries unit economics in dollars, reviewed quarterly. If one doesn't pay back, we sunset it and tell you why.
What happens at the end of the engagement?
You own everything we build: the agents, the prompts, the evaluation framework, the runbooks. We hand off to your internal team, help you hire a full-time CAIO if that's the right next step, or stay on retainer at a reduced cadence for ongoing oversight.
