Articles
AI and the future of consulting
Articles on how AI is changing consulting firms: their competitors, their structure, their economics, their tools and their obligations. Written by Adrien Foucault, ex-McKinsey consultant and founder of Spaik, with his columns for Les Echos further down. Third-party figures are attributed to their source in the notes of each piece.
Annual report · Latest edition
The State of AI in Consulting 2026
Six shifts reshaping the industry: competition from AI labs and scale-ups, the thinning junior tier and the end of the pyramid, AI revenue and pricing pressure, agents deployed at scale, hallucinated citations as the first public AI failures, and the EU AI Act's in-force obligations.
Articles
- AI agents
AI Agents in Consulting: How McKinsey, BCG, Bain and Other Firms Are Using Them
McKinsey counts 25,000 agents in its headcount, BCG consultants have built 18,000 tools of their own, and Bain buys its models rather than building them. What has been deployed, what BCG says it saved, and why agent counts are a poor measure.
· 9 min read - Trust and verification
AI Hallucinations in Consulting: Why Verification Is Becoming a Business-Critical Skill
Deloitte, EY and KPMG each published a report with citations or claims that were not true. The three cases share one mechanism, and verification needs to be a named step in the delivery process.
· 8 min read - Governance and regulation
EU AI Act for Consulting Firms: What Consultancies Need to Know
Articles 4, 5 and 25 already shape how consultancies can use and sell AI: a literacy duty, banned practices with fines up to 7% of turnover, and the point at which a firm becomes a provider. Plus where the UK differs.
· 8 min read - Firm structure
How AI Is Reshaping the Consulting Pyramid
The junior tier is the most exposed to AI, and PwC's own figures show the mechanism. Three structures are emerging to replace the pyramid: the diamond, the obelisk and the hourglass.
· 8 min read - Business models
How AI Is Changing Consulting Business Models and Pricing
AI is taking a growing share of revenue, clients want working systems rather than advice alone, and fees are moving from hours to outcomes. What the firms disclose, and the four models emerging to replace the billable hour.
· 8 min read - Competition
Are AI Labs Becoming Consulting Firms?
OpenAI's deployment company counts McKinsey and Bain as partners, Palantir's engineers sit inside clients, and boutiques run on 80% agents. Established firms face three new competitors at once, and some are also their suppliers.
· 8 min read
In Les Echos
Adrien Foucault writes a regular column for Les Echos, the French business daily, on AI in professional services. The pieces are in French; the summaries below are ours.
- Les Echos · Column (FR)
La fin du « jour-homme » ? Le conseil, secteur le plus transformé par l'IA, doit repenser entièrement son modèle d'affaires
The end of the man-day? Billing consultant hours times headcount is coming apart under AI. Adrien sets out five business models that could take its place.
· lesechos.fr - Les Echos · Column (FR)
150 dollars de l'heure pour former leurs successeurs : est-ce la fin des banquiers juniors ?
OpenAI is hiring young Wall Street analysts at $150 an hour to train the models that may soon replace them. What that means for the junior banker's job.
· lesechos.fr - Les Echos · Column (FR)
Pour déployer l'IA avec succès, appuyez-vous sur vos collaborateurs
Employees already use AI at work, largely without their employer knowing and on a far bigger scale than assumed. Better to build the social infrastructure to benefit from it than to try to restrict it.
· lesechos.fr - Les Echos · Column (FR)
IA : comment réussir la formation de votre équipe
More and more employees want AI training, and companies have every reason to provide it. The pitfalls to avoid when designing it.
· lesechos.fr
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