McKinsey, BCG, and Deloitte's new competition is small, fast, and driven by AI (www.businessinsider.com)

A new wave of boutique consulting firms is using generative AI and multi-agent systems to undercut and augment traditional giants like McKinsey, BCG and the Big Four. These startups—ranging from Xavier AI (an AI chatbot with a proprietary “reasoning engine” that generates full business plans and claims low hallucination rates) to Nexstrat (a multifunctional agent network emulating hypothesis-driven consulting), Consulting IQ (a $99/mo, 5,000-prompt platform tuned by ex-consultants), Perceptis (AI OS for deal research and proposal automation), and sector specialists like Monevate and SIB—are automating repetitive tasks, shrinking delivery time, and offering subscription or contingency pricing. Incumbents and large players are responding too: Genpact’s “Client Zero” pilots internal AI tools such as Amber (an AI listening officer) and reports $40M in operational savings while productizing those solutions for clients. Technically, the trend centers on proprietary reasoning layers, multi-agent orchestration, continual human-in-the-loop fine-tuning to reduce hallucinations, and instrumentation to prove ROI (faster invoice processing, automated vendor analysis, tailored pricing engines). The implication for AI/ML practitioners is twofold: opportunity—real-world demand for domain-adapted LLMs, retrieval-augmented pipelines, and evaluation/guardrail systems—and risk: commoditization of some advisory work and heightened responsibility to ensure model accuracy, source traceability, and measurable business impact as consulting becomes faster, cheaper, and more scalable.