Roadmap
A sequenced plan: what to build, what to buy, what to ignore. Priorities that hold up against cost and latency, not a catalogue of agents.
Fractional Head of AI · Fractional Chief AI Officer · CAIO Paris
A Head of AI for post-seed product companies, without a full-time hire.
You already have a product. AI is stuck on the CEO or CTO’s plate. I own the vision and make it real in production: roadmap, stack, delivery, cadence.
Free, no commitment. I take a very small number of mandates.
- 1-2 days/week Typical time
- Monthly retainer Ongoing work
- Limited seats A few mandates only
- Pricing on demand Set on the diagnostic
What you get
The job is ownership. I sit with the CEO and CTO, decide what the AI system is for, choose the stack, ship it, and keep it running in production.
Stack choices
Models, serving (vLLM, LiteLLM), retrieval, evals (LLM-as-judge), observability (Langfuse, OpenTelemetry), identity (Keycloak when needed), hosting (OVHcloud, Scaleway, on-prem).
Production delivery
RAG, multi-agent orchestration, air-gapped copilots, knowledge graphs. The work is in the repo and in production, not in a workshop readout.
Exec cadence
A regular counterpart for the CEO and CTO. Trade-offs get named. Decisions get made. You always know what is in production and what is next.
Typical shape
Monthly retainer. Typically one to two days per week. I only take a few of these, because I am also building AlexandrIA.
Pricing on demand. We set it on the diagnostic if there is a fit.
How we start
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30-minute diagnostic
Free, no commitment. We check whether you have a product, whether AI is actually stuck, and whether a mandate is the right instrument. If not, you may need to hire, wait, or look at AlexandrIA as software.
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Optional short diagnostic or sprint
If you want a paid first yes before a retainer, we can scope a tight diagnostic or a short production sprint on one concrete question. Pricing on demand. It depends on the work.
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Ongoing mandate
Monthly retainer. Roadmap, stack, delivery, cadence. You get a Head of AI in the room, not a slide vendor on a statement of work.
Who it is for, and not
For
- Post-seed product companies. You have users, not only a deck.
- CEO or CTO who still owns AI personally, and cannot keep doing that.
- Teams that need production systems: RAG, agents, evals, serving, EU-sovereign or on-prem constraints.
- Founders who want a counterpart who has shipped their own product, not only client work.
Not for
- Idea-stage teams with no product.
- Slide-deck consulting, “AI transformation” programmes, or keynote-only work as the engagement.
- SMEs in distribution or logistics looking for an agent factory.
- Anyone expecting a published day rate.
Why me
- I ship my own product. AlexandrIA is a production research co-pilot: visual knowledge maps, billing, EU-sovereign hosting (OVHcloud, Scaleway), recurring paying users. Multi-agent orchestration, RAG, LLM-as-judge, Langfuse. I built it.
- I also lead AI on production systems for clients. On-prem and air-gapped copilots, vLLM, LiteLLM, Keycloak, knowledge graphs.
- I teach. Guest lecturer, LLM Pretraining and Post-training, SCAI (Sorbonne Université) and Centrale Nantes. CKA.
- Selected talks. TensorFlow World 2019, AGIR 2024, Gendarmerie Nationale, Qonto HQ 2025, LLM sovereignty, Centrale Nantes 2025.
FAQ
What is a Fractional Head of AI (or CAIO)?
A Fractional Head of AI, sometimes called a Fractional Chief AI Officer or CAIO, owns AI the way a Head of AI would: vision, stack, production, and a seat with the CEO and CTO. Fractional means a senior person, a few days a week, on a retainer. I work from Paris with post-seed product companies.
How is this different from hiring full-time?
A full-time Head of AI is the right move when you already know the shape of the team and AI is a dedicated function. Most post-seed companies are not there: the work is still on the CTO’s plate, the first hire is hard to specify, and a wrong senior hire is slow and expensive. A mandate gives you someone who has shipped production systems, including their own product, while you decide whether and when to hire.
How is this different from a consulting firm?
Firms sell projects, workshops, and decks. I sit in the product, choose the stack, and ship. Capacity is limited on purpose. I do not staff a bench, and I do not disappear after a readout.
Should we just buy AlexandrIA instead?
If you need a research co-pilot with visual knowledge maps and EU hosting, look at AlexandrIA. A Fractional Head of AI mandate is for companies that need someone to own their AI roadmap and production systems.
What does it cost?
Monthly retainer, typically one to two days per week. Pricing on demand. We set it on the diagnostic.
What happens on the 30-minute diagnostic?
You describe the product, the AI work that is stuck, and the constraint (cloud, EU-sovereign, on-prem). I will tell you if I am a fit, if you should hire instead, or if a short paid sprint is a better first step. No commitment. Email francois.paupier@gmail.com or write on LinkedIn.
A 30-minute diagnostic. No commitment.
Write to François Paupier, Founder and CTO of AlexandrIA, Fractional Head of AI, Paris. Say who you are and what is stuck. If there is no fit, you will hear that.