The bus stops here.

The Big 4 built their AI practices the same way they built everything else, by pulling the bus up and filling it with bodies.

McKinsey. Deloitte. Accenture. IBM. When AI became the client conversation, they hired armies of AI consultants, opened AI studios, launched AI practices, and continued billing at the same rates they always had. $1,193 per hour for a senior McKinsey partner. 10 to 14 people on a mid-market "transformation." 12 to 18 months. And at the end of it, a roadmap, not a system.

70% of Big 4 AI engagements cost more than the initial estimate. Only 2% come in under budget. And 95% of the pilots they launch never reach production. These are not Weaver's numbers. These are McKinsey's own research.

The business model is the problem. Consulting firms are rewarded for hours billed, not outcomes delivered. The longer the engagement, the more bodies on the bus, the higher the fee. There is no structural incentive to deliver quickly, cheaply, or decisively. The incentive is to keep the engagement alive.

AI should have broken this model. Instead, it extended it.

Weaver was built on a different premise. We believe the only measure of an AI engagement is one thing: does it run in production, and does it generate ROI? Not: did the demo work. Not: did the deck land well. Does it run in production, and does it pay back?

That belief has a structural consequence. Fixed fees. Production-first delivery. A financial model built before Phase 2 begins. And an honest conversation if the ROI is not there, before you spend a dollar on engineering.

The bus stops here.