AI consulting for mid-market & PE-backed companies
AI that ships.
ROI you can prove.
We find your highest-value workflows, build the AI, and deploy it to production in 10–14 weeks — then track the ROI. Transparent pricing, no lock-in.
See engagements & pricing- 79% → 11%
- Claim AI adoption vs. run agents in production
- $11B
- AI consulting market, growing 26% YoY
- 47%
- Of PE funds increasing AI spend in 2026
- 10–14 wk
- Kickoff to live production system
“Pilots that never ship”
We define “live” up front and build to production criteria — not another POC that dies in a deck.
“No one can prove the ROI”
We baseline your KPIs on day one and track every dollar of impact through launch and beyond.
“We’ll be locked into a vendor”
You own the code, the models, and the runbooks. Hand-built in your stack, yours to keep.
01 — The thesis
79% are buying AI.
11% are running it.
The 68-point production gap is where strategy decks die — and where every ClearForge engagement begins.
Pilot purgatory
POCs without production-readiness criteria. We define “live” up front and ship to it.
Benefits void
72% of AI investments destroyed value because no one tracked it. We measure baselines on day one.
Adoption gap
Builders leave; teams revert. We ship runbooks, training, and an operating cadence — not a handoff slide.
02 — Engagements
A transparent ladder.
Mid-market budgets.
Published prices, fixed scope. Each step ships an artifact you own and credits forward into the next.
Forge Diagnostic™
D-014 weeks
Best for · Companies exploring AI for the first time or needing a clear starting point.
A senior-led assessment that selects the right workflow, checks data readiness, sets a baseline, and gives leadership a build plan they can approve.
- Stakeholder interviews across leadership and operations
- Workflow mapping with value, effort, and risk scoring
- Data readiness and infrastructure audit
- Prioritized build plan with value hypotheses and assumptions
Forge Sprint™
D-0210–14 weeks
Best for · Companies ready to put one important workflow into production with clear owners and metrics.
An intensive build engagement. We diagnose the problem, engineer the solution, deploy it into production, and train your team to run it - all in one sprint.
- Working production system, not a prototype
- Integration with your existing tech stack
- Named workflow owner and handoff plan
- Team training, runbooks, and adoption support
Forge Scale™
D-03Ongoing
Best for · Companies with production AI that want continuous improvement and expansion.
Ongoing AI operations for live systems. We review usage, tune workflows, scope the next build, and keep owners aligned on measured value.
- Senior AI operators on demand
- New workflow scopes and agent updates as needed
- Monthly review of live-system performance
- Weekly or biweekly working sessions with leadership
03 — Operators
The humans on
your engagement,
by name.
ClearForge is staffed by senior operators only — Bain-grade strategists who also write production code. We don’t sell a methodology and pyramid a team underneath it. The signature on the proposal is the signature on the commit.
No bench
The senior operator who scopes the work runs the work. No handoff to a junior delivery team.
No nameless team
Every engagement lists the named humans on it. You meet them in week one.
Hand-built systems
Code, integrations, and runbooks are written by people — and reviewed by the operator who owns the outcome.
Adoption is staffed
A real human runs your training and 30-day post-launch reviews. Not a Notion doc and a Slack channel.
04 — Selected work
Sales intelligence
across 16 divisions.
A $4B industrial conglomerate replaced manual, siloed prospecting with a production AI intelligence platform — calibrated to its own product lines.
Industrial · Sales Intelligence
Proprietary agents scan capital projects and demand signals across 20+ states, feed reps scored opportunities daily, and surface cross-division white space — with KPIs tracked from day one.
Qualified opportunities in 6 months
Match to actual product capabilities
Investment value in the top 10 alone
05 — Firm
A consultant
who builds.
Founded by James Penz — 15 years across Bain, EY, and Capgemini, including Bain’s AI Automation practice, before building ClearForge. The team in the discovery call is the team that ships. Senior operators only.
— Next step
Five questions.
Your production-readiness score in four minutes.
See where you sit against the 11% running agents in production — and what to fix first.