OpenAI Just Proved the Biggest AI Opportunity Isn't AI. It's the Consulting Carve.

Last Updated: February 26, 2026

By AJ Awan, Founder of Flowtivity | Former EY Manager, IT Advisory (6 years) | TOGAF 9 Certified Enterprise Architect

OpenAI's new Frontier Alliance with McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, and Capgemini isn't a technology partnership. It's the opening move in the largest consulting carve since cloud computing created a trillion-dollar services economy. And if you understand what a "carve" actually means in consulting, this announcement becomes far more interesting, and far more consequential, than the headlines suggest.

These four firms collectively cut tens of thousands of their own staff in 2023 and 2024. They restructured their own operations around AI. They replaced human work with automation internally. And now they're packaging that exact playbook, the one they tested on their own workforce, and selling it to every Fortune 500 company as "digital workforce transformation."

That's not a partnership announcement. That's a business model.

What Is a Consulting "Carve" and Why Does It Matter Now?

A consulting carve is the process where major firms restructure around a platform shift, cutting and reorganising their own operations first, then productising those learnings into advisory services they sell to enterprise clients. Every major technology wave has followed this pattern. Cloud computing created dedicated AWS and Azure practices at every Big 4 firm. The mobile revolution spawned entire digital divisions. Accenture Interactive and Deloitte Digital became multi-billion dollar business lines built on the back of a platform shift that the firms navigated internally before selling the roadmap externally.

The AI carve is following the same playbook, but with one critical difference. Previous carves were about adopting new tools. This one is about replacing workers. That makes the stakes, the budgets, and the political complexity orders of magnitude larger.

Here's what makes the current carve different from cloud or digital transformation. When Accenture built its cloud practice, it didn't fire 19,000 cloud engineers first. But that's precisely what happened with AI. Accenture cut 19,000 jobs in 2023. McKinsey cut roughly 2,000 positions the same year. EY cancelled its planned split and went through significant restructuring. Capgemini reduced headcount by thousands across 2023 and 2024. These weren't unrelated cost-cutting exercises. They were the internal phase of the carve. The firms automated their own operations, learned what worked, documented the playbook, and are now selling that experience to the market through partnerships like OpenAI's Frontier Alliance.

The pattern is always the same. Restructure internally. Productise the learnings. Sell it as advisory. That's the carve. And right now, we're watching it happen in real time at a scale we haven't seen before.

Why Did OpenAI Choose Consulting Firms Instead of Technology Partners?

OpenAI chose McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, and Capgemini because AI agent deployment is not a technology problem. It's an organisational transformation problem. The technical barriers to running AI agents are relatively low. The real challenge is redesigning workflows, redefining roles, managing change across thousands of employees, and navigating the political complexity of workforce restructuring. Those are consulting problems, not engineering problems.

This is the strategic genius of Frontier's positioning. OpenAI's platform frames AI agents as "new hires" that need to be onboarded, supervised, and governed. That language is deliberate. It transforms AI deployment from a CTO's budget line into a CHRO's transformation programme. And transformation programmes are exactly what McKinsey and BCG have been selling for decades.

The alliance structure reveals the strategy clearly. BCG and McKinsey are positioned as strategy and operating model partners. They'll help leadership teams decide where and how to deploy agents at scale. Accenture and Capgemini take the systems integration role, handling data architecture, cloud infrastructure, and the complex work of connecting Frontier to existing enterprise systems. OpenAI's own forward-deployed engineers work alongside all of them.

This mirrors the exact structure that made Salesforce and SAP implementations into multi-billion dollar consulting revenue streams. The platform vendor provides the technology. The consulting firms provide the organisational transformation wrapper. The client pays both. It's a proven model, and OpenAI is executing it with the four firms best positioned to sell workforce transformation because they've already done it to themselves.

I spent six years at EY watching this dynamic from the inside. When a new platform gains enough enterprise traction, the consulting firms don't just advise on it. They build entire practice groups, hire hundreds of certified specialists, and create proprietary methodologies around deployment. That's already happening with Frontier. Each of the four alliance partners is investing in dedicated practice groups and building teams certified on OpenAI technology. The carve is underway.

What Makes the AI Carve Different from Cloud or Digital Transformation?

The AI carve is fundamentally different because it targets labour, not infrastructure. Cloud transformation moved workloads from on-premise servers to AWS or Azure. Digital transformation added new customer-facing channels. Neither of those directly eliminated large numbers of jobs in the way that AI workforce transformation is designed to do. When a consulting firm walks into a client and proposes an AI agent deployment, the implicit (and often explicit) outcome is headcount reduction. That changes the dynamics of every stakeholder conversation.

This is why the consulting firms that cut their own staff first are so well positioned. Their pitch to enterprise clients is essentially: "We restructured our own workforce around AI agents. We cut 19,000 positions (in Accenture's case) and maintained or improved service delivery. We know what works, what fails, and how to manage the transition. Let us do the same for you."

That's an extraordinarily powerful sales message. It's not theoretical. It's not a framework from a whitepaper. It's lived experience, backed by real operational data from firms that bet their own businesses on the approach.

The numbers tell the story of how large this market will become:

• Cloud consulting grew into a $200+ billion annual services market within a decade of AWS launching
• Digital transformation spending reached $3.4 trillion globally by 2026 according to IDC estimates
• AI workforce transformation combines elements of both, plus the added complexity of labour restructuring, change management, and regulatory compliance

Conservative estimates suggest AI transformation consulting will become a $50 billion annual market within five years. Aggressive estimates put it significantly higher. The consulting firms positioning now, through alliances like Frontier, are placing their bets on the aggressive end.

The political dimension cannot be overstated. When McKinsey advises a CEO to deploy AI agents that will replace 2,000 customer service representatives, that engagement requires board-level stakeholder management, union negotiation support, redeployment programme design, and regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions. Those are high-margin, long-duration consulting engagements. A single enterprise AI workforce transformation could generate $5 million to $50 million in consulting fees depending on the organisation's size and complexity.

How Will This Reshape the Enterprise Software Market?

The Frontier Alliance threatens the existing enterprise software ecosystem in ways that go beyond simple competition. SaaS vendors like Salesforce, Workday, Microsoft, and ServiceNow have spent years building their own AI agent capabilities. But OpenAI just recruited their distribution channel. The same consulting firms that sell and implement Salesforce are now also selling and implementing Frontier. That creates a direct conflict of interest that will reshape enterprise purchasing decisions.

Investors have already noticed. In the weeks following Frontier's launch, SaaS stocks took significant hits on concerns that customers would choose OpenAI's and Anthropic's agent platforms over those from traditional SaaS vendors. Some analysts raised an even more disruptive scenario: that enterprises might use AI coding tools to build their own software entirely, eliminating the need for SaaS products altogether.

For the consulting firms, this creates a remarkable position. They become the kingmakers. A McKinsey partner advising a Fortune 500 CTO on AI strategy can now recommend Frontier (and generate implementation revenue from the alliance) or recommend Salesforce's Agentforce (and generate traditional SI revenue). The consulting firms win regardless of which platform prevails. That's not an accident. That's the economics of the carve.

The mid-market implication is equally significant. When the Big 4 focus their Frontier Alliance resources on Fortune 500 engagements (which they will, because that's where the fees are largest), it creates a vacuum. Companies with $5 million to $100 million in revenue face the same AI workforce transformation pressure but can't afford McKinsey's rates. They need firms that understand the consulting playbook but operate at a different price point and pace.

What Does "Digital Workforce Transformation" Actually Mean in Practice?

Digital workforce transformation is the process of redesigning an organisation's operating model to integrate AI agents as permanent members of the workforce. It goes beyond installing software. It requires fundamentally rethinking which tasks are performed by humans, which are performed by AI agents, and how the two collaborate. The consulting firms selling this service are drawing on their own internal restructuring as proof of concept.

In practice, a digital workforce transformation engagement typically includes several phases:

• Workforce analysis: Mapping every role in the organisation against AI capability, identifying which tasks can be fully automated, which require human-AI collaboration, and which remain purely human
• Agent architecture: Designing the AI agent topology, including which agents handle which workflows, how they're supervised, and what governance frameworks apply
• Change management: Managing the human side of the transition, including redeployment programmes, reskilling initiatives, and stakeholder communications
• Operating model redesign: Restructuring teams, reporting lines, and performance metrics around a blended human-AI workforce
• Governance and compliance: Building the policies, audit trails, and regulatory frameworks required to deploy AI agents in regulated industries

OpenAI's Frontier platform is designed specifically for this use case. It provides the tools to build, deploy, supervise, and govern AI agents. The consulting firms provide the organisational transformation methodology. Together, they're offering enterprises a complete package: the technology and the playbook for reshaping their workforce.

The "manage AI agents like new hires" framing is strategically important because it makes the concept legible to CEOs and boards who don't think in technical terms. Every executive understands hiring, onboarding, and managing employees. Frontier maps AI agent deployment onto those familiar concepts, which dramatically reduces the perceived complexity and risk of adoption. That's why consulting firms love it. It's a framework they can sell.

What Does This Mean for Mid-Market Businesses?

The mid-market will face the same AI workforce transformation pressure as the Fortune 500, but without access to the same advisory resources. McKinsey's minimum engagement fee effectively prices out any company below $500 million in revenue. BCG and the other alliance partners operate at similar thresholds. That leaves a massive segment of the economy, businesses with $5 million to $100 million in revenue, navigating the most complex organisational transformation of their lifetime without the guidance that large enterprises take for granted.

This is where the opportunity lives for firms like Flowtivity and others operating in the mid-market advisory space. The consulting playbook that McKinsey is selling for seven figures can be adapted, streamlined, and delivered at a price point that mid-market businesses can justify. The core challenges are identical: which roles change, how do workflows get redesigned, what governance is needed, how do you manage the human impact. The difference is scale and budget, not substance.

The mid-market advantage is actually speed. A $20 million professional services firm can redesign its operating model in weeks. A Fortune 500 company takes 18 months and $10 million in consulting fees to achieve the same outcome. Smaller organisations can move faster, test more aggressively, and iterate in ways that large enterprises simply cannot. The firms that help mid-market businesses capture that speed advantage will build significant practices over the next five years.

The firms that win in this space won't position themselves as "AI consultants." They'll position themselves as workforce transformation partners who happen to use AI as the enabling technology. That distinction matters. CEOs don't buy technology. They buy outcomes. And the outcome they're buying is a more efficient, more capable organisation that can compete against rivals who are already restructuring around AI.

What Should Business Leaders Be Doing Right Now?

Business leaders should be treating the Frontier Alliance as a signal, not a news story. The fact that OpenAI chose consulting firms as its go-to-market partners confirms that enterprise AI has moved from a technology adoption problem to an organisational transformation problem. Leaders who are still evaluating AI tools are already behind. The question is no longer "should we use AI?" It's "how do we restructure our workforce around AI before our competitors do?"

The immediate actions are straightforward:

• Audit your workforce against AI capability. Map every role and function against what current AI agents can do. Not what they might do in two years. What they can do today. The gap between "theoretically automatable" and "practically automatable" is closing faster than most leaders realise.
• Watch what the consulting firms do, not what they say. Accenture didn't publish a whitepaper about AI workforce transformation. It cut 19,000 jobs. McKinsey didn't run a pilot programme. It restructured. Their actions tell you where this is heading more clearly than any analyst report.
• Start with one workflow, not a strategy document. The most successful AI transformations start with a single, well-defined workflow that gets fully redesigned around AI agents. Success there builds the organisational muscle and political capital for broader transformation.
• Budget for transformation, not just technology. The Frontier platform itself is a fraction of the cost. The real investment is in redesigning workflows, retraining staff, and managing the transition. Budget accordingly, or you'll end up with expensive AI tools that nobody uses.
• Find advisors who've done it, not just studied it. The most valuable partners in AI workforce transformation are those who have actually restructured operations around AI, whether at enterprise scale or in their own businesses. Theory is cheap. Operational experience is what matters.

The Frontier Alliance is the starting gun for enterprise AI workforce transformation. The consulting firms are positioned. The platform is built. The playbook is proven (on the consultants' own organisations, no less). The only question is how quickly the rest of the market follows.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OpenAI's Frontier Alliance? OpenAI's Frontier Alliance is a set of multi-year partnerships with McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, and Capgemini to sell and implement OpenAI's Frontier AI agent platform for enterprise clients. The consulting firms are building dedicated practice groups and certified teams to help large organisations deploy and govern AI agents at scale.

Why are consulting firms partnering with OpenAI instead of building their own AI? Consulting firms are distribution and transformation partners, not technology builders. Their value is in helping enterprises navigate organisational change, redesign workflows, and manage workforce transitions. OpenAI provides the AI agent platform; the consulting firms provide the transformation methodology and client relationships. This mirrors the model that made cloud and digital transformation into multi-billion dollar consulting practices.

How does the consulting "carve" pattern apply to AI? The carve pattern is when consulting firms restructure internally around a platform shift, then sell that transformation playbook to clients. With AI, firms like Accenture (19,000 jobs cut in 2023) and McKinsey (roughly 2,000 positions cut) restructured their own workforces first. They're now monetising that experience by partnering with OpenAI to sell AI workforce transformation to enterprise clients.

What does this mean for mid-market businesses? Mid-market businesses ($5M to $100M revenue) face the same AI workforce transformation pressure as the Fortune 500 but can't afford McKinsey-level advisory fees. This creates an opportunity for mid-market advisory firms to deliver the same transformation playbook at accessible price points. The advantage for smaller businesses is speed; they can restructure in weeks rather than the 18 months typical of enterprise engagements.

What is "digital workforce transformation"? Digital workforce transformation is the process of redesigning an organisation's operating model to integrate AI agents as permanent members of the workforce. It includes workforce analysis, agent architecture design, change management, operating model restructuring, and governance frameworks. It goes beyond technology installation to fundamentally rethink how humans and AI agents collaborate across every business function.