The big consultancies have quietly repriced their AI practices. It is not the direction the market expected.

The narrative that generative AI would erode the pricing power of the large consulting firms was the confident forecast of late 2024. Eighteen months in, the rate cards suggest something more nuanced.

Blended rates on the largest AI transformation programmes at the four largest global consultancies have risen, not fallen. The composition of the teams delivering them has shifted materially. Fewer analysts and associates, more principals and specialised engineers, and, the new line item, a growing pool of what the firms internally call AI operations leads.

The unit economics have improved. Programmes that would previously have staffed a pyramid now staff something closer to a diamond, and the diamond is more profitable per hour than the pyramid was.

The compression, where it is visible, is happening at the smaller end of the market. In the specialist advisory firms whose value proposition rested on turning good analysts into slides faster than the client could. That work is now genuinely commoditised. The strategic work at the top of the pyramid is not.