Senior AI expertise. Direct access. Real outcomes.
Most AI consultancies send strategists who've never shipped a model, or developers who can't see the business picture. I provide both: PhD-level technical depth with 15+ years of commercial delivery.
Your consultant
Dr Colin Kelly
Oxford BA in Maths & Computer Science. Cambridge PhD in Natural Language Processing. 15+ years building AI systems across financial services, telco, and automotive. I founded Agathon to give organisations access to the kind of senior AI expertise that large consultancies promise but rarely deliver.
Read my storyHow I can help
Four ways to work together, each led personally by me from first conversation to final deliverable.
AI Product Pioneering
Hands-on development of AI products that exploit full technical potential — not basic implementations
Learn moreAI Due Diligence
Technical assessment that separates real AI capability from sophisticated marketing. Before you invest.
Learn moreAI Leadership Advisory
Strategic consulting to build internal AI capability that reduces outside dependencies
Learn moreFractional CTO
Ongoing executive technical leadership across all technology decisions, not just AI initiatives
Learn moreWhy Agathon
What you get when technical depth, commercial pragmatism, and personal accountability come together.
Technical depth that's rare in consulting.
I hold a PhD in Natural Language Processing from Cambridge. I've led applied AI research teams, built production ML systems, and delivered millions of pounds in quantified AI benefits across financial services, telco, and automotive. I understand how these models actually work, not just how to talk about them.
Commercial pragmatism that's rare in research.
Fifteen years in enterprise environments taught me that technical excellence means nothing if it doesn't ship. I've navigated funding rounds, managed complex stakeholder politics, and delivered under constraints that academic researchers never face.
Direct access, not delegation.
When you engage Agathon, you work with me. I don't sell then disappear. I don't hand you off to juniors. The person on the strategy call is the same person doing the work.
Client story
AI Product Pioneering: From Concept to Market Leader
Agathon joined the founding team of an AI writing product as fractional CTO, shaping the product from early concept through to market. We designed novel interface patterns for human-AI collaboration that fundamentally changed how their users create documents.
This wasn't adding AI features to an existing workflow. We built something new — a product that established its own approach to AI-assisted writing and now leads its space.
Role: Fractional CTO covering product strategy, technical architecture, developer management and commercialisation planning.
Strategic workshops
Intensive, practical sessions designed to build real capability, not just awareness.
Latest insights
The AI Team Decision: When to Build Internally, When to Stay Fractional, and When to Do Both
Rather than treating AI resourcing as a binary "build or outsource" choice, companies should honestly assess their maturity and progress through a natural sequence — from fractional external leadership, to a hybrid model that builds internal capability, to a self-sufficient team — hiring only when clear readiness signals are met, since premature hiring is far costlier than most leaders expect.
What Happens After You Discover The AI Isn't Real: a Due Diligence Decision Framework
This article provides a practical framework for investors to categorise AI misrepresentation discovered during due diligence — from marketing exaggeration to outright fraud — and translate those findings into appropriate deal structures, remediation costs, and walk-away decisions.
Why AI Startups Need a Different Kind of CTO, and What That Looks Like
AI-native startups fail when they hire traditional software CTOs who apply deterministic thinking to inherently probabilistic AI systems, creating a critical but overlooked leadership gap that costs companies months of misdirected effort.
The Investor's Technical Due Diligence Playbook: What Most AI Assessments Actually Miss
Current AI due diligence processes fail because they apply traditional software evaluation frameworks to fundamentally different AI risks, missing crucial questions about data provenance, model defensibility, and the intersection between technical depth and strategic positioning.
Best Consulting Firms for Defining Your AI Strategy in 2026: An Honest Buyer's Guide
This guide argues that choosing the right AI strategy consultant depends on matching your company's specific needs, size, and budget to the appropriate type of firm (whether global consultancies for enterprise credibility, specialist boutiques for technical depth, or independent consultants for focused expertise) rather than simply picking the most famous name.
The key metrics to measure the ROI of your LLM deployments
Most organisations measure LLM success using traditional software metrics whilst sitting on transformational cognitive infrastructure they barely understand how to evaluate properly.
EU AI Act Explained: Compliance Requirements and Business Impact
The EU AI Act's extraterritorial reach and risk-based classification system will reshape global AI development by creating competitive advantages for organisations that build regulatory compliance into their systems from conception rather than retrofitting it later.
Let's talk about what you're building
Whether you need hands-on AI development, strategic guidance, or technical due diligence, the first step is a conversation.
Get in Touch