00 An embedded AI executive · part-time, accountable for outcomes · India

From pilots that never ship to governed production.

I own your AI strategy, governance, and roadmap. I get your first use cases into production, and leave your team able to run it. You do not carry the cost or the wait of a full-time Chief AI Officer.

Book a discovery call Start with an AI Readiness Assessment

26 years at Google · Amazon · Walmart · building agentic AI now.

Sunil Mathew
Sunil MathewFractional CAIO · ex-Google, Amazon, Walmart
Engineering and leadership experience
01 The leadership gap

You don't have an AI tooling problem. You have an AI ownership problem.

The signs are familiar. Pilots that demo well and never ship. AI tools spreading through teams with no one watching the data or the risk. A CTO already at capacity, now expected to add AI strategy on top. Your best engineers quietly leaving because nothing they build on actually reaches customers. And a board asking where the return is.

None of this is solved by another platform subscription. It is solved by one senior person holding the mandate. That person owns the strategy, the governance, the build-versus-buy calls, and the accountability for getting something real into production.

That's the seat I fill.

02 What a fractional CAIO owns

The whole AI agenda, not a corner of it.

// strategy

Strategy & roadmap

Your AI use cases sequenced by impact and readiness, aligned to where the business actually makes money.

// governance

Governance & risk

A governance model that turns unapproved AI use into approved AI use. It is mapped to the DPDP Act and to your regulator (IRDAI, RBI, SEBI). It is also mapped to global frameworks where you operate across borders.

// decisions

Build-vs-buy & vendors

The decisions that are expensive to reverse, made deliberately and defended.

// delivery

First use cases into production

Not more pilots. Two to three that ship, with evals and cost you can stand behind.

// board

Board & leadership reporting

Translating AI from anxiety into a plan your board can fund and track.

// handover

Capability transfer

Building the operating model and the literacy so your team carries it after I step back.

A consultant hands you a deck and leaves. I join the operating rhythm, and I am accountable for whether the metric moves.
03 Where the lines are

Clear decision rights, from day one.

vs your CTO

Your CTO runs the engineering organisation. I own AI strategy and governance across the business, and I sit above delivery. We define decision rights at the start. I make the CTO's job easier, not harder.

vs a full-time CAIO

You get the same accountability and the same board-facing ownership, at a fraction of the time and cost. The engagement is designed to end, not to become a permanent dependency.

vs an AI agency

They deliver an agreed scope. I own outcomes, and I will tell you when the answer is don't build this.

04 The maker

I've shipped this at the scale where mistakes are expensive, and I am doing the work now.

Build
Engineering systems
Lead
Guide technical decisions
Review
Examine evidence and risk
Teach
Transfer design judgment
Sunil Mathew
Sunil Mathew · Bengaluru, India

I'm Sunil Mathew. I have spent twenty-six years building and leading engineering at Google, Amazon, and Walmart, and at startups. I have built and led engineering teams across the US, UK, China, and India.

Today I lead agentic-AI work: multi-agent orchestration, RAG, evals, LLM-Ops. I am also building an agentic-AI product of my own. So my judgment is current, not a memory.

"Here is the rare part for this role. I have done both the executive strategy and the production delivery. I also teach this craft to senior engineers. So transferring capability to your team is not an afterthought. It is how I work."

See how I teach the craft at The Living Craft

— Sunil Mathew
05 The engagement

A fixed 90-day start, then we follow the agenda.

Phase 1Weeks 1–4

Assess

Readiness, roadmap, and the foundation for governance. If we have already done the AI Readiness Assessment, this phase starts well ahead, and the assessment fee is credited.

Phase 2Months 2–3

Operationalise

Governance live, vendors decided, first use cases moving into production with evals in place.

Phase 3Ongoing

Enable

Capability transfer, operating-model documentation, and a clear path to either a leaner advisory cadence or your own full-time hire when scope justifies it.

Most engagements run 6–18 months. That is two to three days a week early on, reducing as your team takes over.

06 Ways to work together

Three ways in.

Advisory
~2 days / month

Board cadence, governance oversight, and decision support for a team that is already moving.

From ₹1,50,000/ month
Enquire
Most common
Embedded
~1 day / week

Roadmap ownership plus getting your first use cases into production.

From ₹3,50,000/ month
Enquire
Transformation
2–3 days / week

Full ownership. I build the function, the governance, and the team from the ground up.

From ₹6,00,000/ month
Enquire

90-day minimum. Payment plans available. Most engagements begin with an AI Readiness Assessment.

07 The first step

Start with a diagnosis, not a contract.

The simplest way to start is the AI Readiness Assessment. It takes two to three weeks, for a fixed fee. You get a board-ready roadmap that you own, whatever you decide to do next. If you bring me on to drive it, the fee is credited toward your first month.

Book a discovery call

Thirty minutes. We talk through where you are with AI, and I tell you plainly whether this is something I can help with.

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You don't need a $400K hire to get serious about AI. You need someone who has done it before to own it for a while, and then hand it back.