Several UK consultants have left large firms to start AI consultancy startups, as growth in the country's AI consulting sector outpaces the broader market
A number of consultants have left big firms to create their own software companies to automate common and repetitive work
Context & Ripple Effects
Demand for AI advice had already become material for established consultancies, with firms including BCG, McKinsey and KPMG reporting rising AI-advisory demand in the earlier expansion of AI advisory work. This story shows that the opportunity is also drawing individual practitioners into independent, software-oriented ventures.
It is an early point in a later-covered shift in which AI agents give smaller consultancies more capacity to compete with large firms on workloads once concentrated at the Big Four. The UK sector’s faster growth makes the departures consequential beyond ordinary startup formation.
First-order effects
- The departing consultants become founders and redirect their expertise toward products and services that automate routine client work.
- Large consultancies lose some practitioners to new specialist competitors while facing a more software-led version of AI consulting.
Second-order effects
- Smaller AI consultancies can use automation to serve work that would otherwise require larger delivery teams, increasing competitive pressure on established firms’ staffing-heavy engagements.
- Clients seeking AI implementation gain more specialized supplier options, while incumbents have greater incentive to package repeatable work into software or automation offerings.
Third-order effects
- If these ventures establish durable client relationships, consulting competition may shift from scale and headcount toward AI-enabled delivery capacity and proprietary workflow products.
- The pattern aligns with a less concentrated advisory market, though large firms’ client access and broad service portfolios could limit how far that fragmentation extends.
The trend: AI is lowering the delivery-scale advantage of traditional consultancies, enabling AI-native specialists to turn repeatable advisory work into software-assisted services.