You’re already your company’s head of AI. You just don’t have time for it.
Ask a founder who’s in charge of AI and most of them point at themselves — on top of running the whole company. I’m Chris Hunter, and as your fractional CAIO I take it off your plate: I build the systems, keep them running, and fix them when they break, so you’re not dropping everything to babysit a bot. I’ve already done it in my own company — a production AI setup that replaced $4,000 a month in staffed roles for about $460.
You got handed the head-of-AI job. Whether you wanted it or not.
Ask a room of founders who’s in charge of AI, and the hands go up slow — their own. That job quietly landed on you. But you’re already running the company. You don’t have time to build the stuff, and you definitely don’t have time to keep up with it — it changes every week. When it breaks, you drop everything and go fix it yourself, because there’s no one else. And you can’t justify a full-time Chief AI Officer at $250K, or even an AI director. Doing nothing isn’t the answer either — this is what keeps your company moving forward. That’s the gap I fill.
I’ve actually done this — in my own company
I’m not a consultant who read about AI. Over the last two years I built and shipped a production multi-agent system that runs real operations against real customers: an AI sales rep that works every lead the moment it lands, a voice receptionist that answers 100% of inbound calls, an executive assistant, and a full marketing department — coordinated by a PM that briefs my team. It replaced $4,000 a month in roles and runs for about $460. For one client, that kind of system helped grow revenue from $2.2M to $3.7M at a 56-to-1 return on marketing spend. I’ve made the payroll AI replaces, so I know exactly what it has to beat.
How we start: an AI assessment
I look at how your business actually runs and find the two or three places AI will make or save the most money. You get a straight answer, not a sales pitch.
A prioritized plan — what to build first, what to skip, what each piece should return, and what it costs to run.
As your fractional CAIO, I put the system in place and keep it working, with a human approving anything that reaches a customer.
What you get, without a $250K hire
A full-time Chief AI Officer runs $250K and up, and you don’t need one full-time yet. Fractional gets you the same judgment for a fraction of it: AI strategy, deciding what AI should and shouldn’t take on, overseeing the build, owning the spend-to-return, and moving a skeptical team through the change. And when something breaks, I’m the one who fixes it — not you, at 11 p.m.
AI you can trust in front of customers
The build isn’t the hard part. The guardrails are. Nothing public ships without a human approving it. Every night an agent reviews the customer-facing conversations and flags anything off, so problems get caught before a customer ever feels them. And I build vendor-independent — my own system has run on both Claude Code and Codex — so you’re never locked to one provider’s price or outage.
Twenty-three years before the AI part
I built a web company and sold it, then co-founded and ran a marketing agency to 12 people and about 35 clients — carrying the P&L the whole way. I wrote a book on digital marketing, host three podcasts (352 episodes and counting), and speak at industry conferences. The tools change every month. The judgment about what to do with them is what I bring.
Get the head-of-AI job off your plate
Start with an assessment — no slide deck, no jargon, just where AI will make or save you money and what it’d take to run it right.
