• Chips Ahoy is reinventing its classic cookies to stay relevant with Gen Z.
• In its latest cross-brand collaboration, Chips Ahoy created a "Stranger Things" themed cookie.
• The legacy brand aims to innovate more quickly and capture new flavor trends as snack tastes change.

One of America's favorite cookies has gotten a makeover — and it's aimed squarely at Gen Z.

Chips Ahoy has released one of its largest cross-brand collaborations in partnership with Netflix's "Stranger Things," which returns for its final season on November 26.

The inky black soft chew cookies evoke the show's dark aesthetic, with an '80s-themed package that would fit perfectly in Winona Ryder's kitchen.

"Stranger Things," a cultural touchstone since its 2016 debut, has been a particular hit with Gen Z viewers, despite many of them having been born long after the era of hair metal and satanic panic.

Chris Park, Mondelez International's Director of Savory Revenue Growth Management, was the project lead on the "Stranger Things" collaboration in his former role as Director of Chips Ahoy Innovation.

"From our brand point of view, we really want new ways to connect with our consumers, especially that Gen Z audience, and what better way to do that than with "Stranger Things"?" Park told Business Insider. "Partnerships, I think, are one of the biggest things that we can do to be part of the cultural conversation."

A snack industry re-shaped for Gen Z's tastes

Branding experts told Business Insider in September that good cross-brand partnerships can be hard to pull off — especially when targeting Gen Z customers, because of their demand for well-integrated authenticity from marketing campaigns — but, when done well, can offer both brands a chance at viral sales, to shape the social conversation around their products, and potentially expand their audience.

That's what Chips Ahoy, and its parent company Mondelēz, are after, as the snack giant aims to capture consumers' attention at a time when they're snacking less, cutting down on processed foods, and have more options than ever.

The "Stranger Things" cookie features a strawberry center in a nod to the color scheme in the "upside down" parallel dimension, where much of the show takes place. It's also the first time Chips Ahoy has experimented with a fruit flavor — itself an intentional nod toward Gen Z.

"Some of the trends that we see are that, especially with Gen Z, they love to try snacks with new flavors, whether that's something trending or that they've tried at restaurants," Park said. "Certain combinations are a very appealing flavor package to them. The cinnamon bun cookie we launched this year is a good example of that strategy — so is the strawberry and chocolate."

New flavors for new generations

Chips Ahoy debuted in 1963 under the Nabisco brand, which was acquired by Mondelēz in 2000. In the years since, the company has experimented with flavors like red velvet, s'mores, and confetti cake. Going forward, Park said they aim to be bolder with their flavor combinations, hoping to capitalize on viral trends like Dubai chocolate, or black sesame and matcha, which Yelp on November 18 identified as increasingly popular in its 2026 trend forecast.

And Chips Ahoy isn't the only snack brand leaning hard into Gen Z's tastes. Oreo, which is also owned by Mondelēz, launched its Reese's-Oreo product line in September, targeting the younger demographic after the flavor combination gained popularity on TikTok, according to Michelle Deignan, the brand's VP of Marketing, who spoke to Business Insider at the time.

However, expanding the variety of flavors available comes with operational challenges for a company the size of Chips Ahoy, as it needs to scale up the millions, or even billions, of cookies for any given flavor launch. As a result, Park said the company is actively working to streamline its innovation process for future product line-ups, even if that means limited-time runs or regional drops.

"As a company, we want to look at ways to be faster and to really meet those trends quickly, whether and even if it's more on a smaller scale that gives consumers and our fans a chance to experience our product with those fast-moving trends," Park said. "That's something we're really, really looking at."

Park said Chips Ahoy has to balance staying true to its iconic legacy while modernizing its offerings to keep up with changing tastes in the snack industry. It could be an uphill battle — Business Insider reported in July that Mondelēz's sales volume in the US fell during the company's second quarter due to changes in consumer snacking behavior — but Park said it's one the brand is going all-in on.

"Whether it's new flavors, other innovations that will come next year, new partners, new limited editions that will eventually make their way into the market — we as a brand are really diving into becoming even more relevant with our audience," Park said.

• The Trump administration has floated options to make mortgages cheaper.
• These alternatives could put buyers at risk and raise home prices.
• We examined the pros and cons of creative financing, ranging from 50-year mortgages to seller financing.

As mortgage rates stay stubbornly high, President Donald Trump and his administration have floated a few ideas to help buyers afford a mortgage.

Most notably, the president said he's considering 50-year mortgages. Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said his team is also exploring ways buyers can lock in low interest rates from older mortgages.

There are a slew of creative financing options out there that could make buying a home cheaper. But they can be risky. Some could backfire and lead to higher prices amid an ongoing housing shortage.

All of the discussion about more affordable mortgages is a function of politicians attempting to come up with short-term solutions to a complicated problem that can't be fixed overnight because "they're under pressure from their constituents who can't afford to buy," said Lance Lambert, co-founder of real estate media and research group ResiClub.

The cost of the typical mortgage more than doubled between December 2019 and December 2024 because of skyrocketing home prices and elevated mortgage interest rates.

Here are four alternative financing approaches, along with their strengths and weaknesses.

50-year mortgages

Trump and Pulte made headlines when they proposed their unusual plan for half-century-long home loans. The idea of stretching debt would be to make monthly payments more affordable for borrowers and put homeownership within reach for more Americans.

However, the idea has been widely criticized by housing economists, who argue that a 50-year loan would significantly increase a buyer's debt burden, resulting in a higher total interest payment over the life of the loan.

For example, the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed mortgage with a 6% interest rate for a typical home would be about $2,000, Business Insider previously reported. The same terms for a 50-year loan would shrink that monthly payment to around $1,800. But over the life of the half-century loan, the borrower would pay about $750,000 in interest, rather than about $400,000 in interest for the three-decade loan.

In addition to the increased interest paid over the lifetime of the mortgage, lenders typically view longer-term loans as riskier, so they'll likely charge higher rates on a 50-year mortgage.

It would also take much longer for the borrower to build equity in their home, which is key to building wealth. If the federal government were to back these longer loans, it could also backfire by boosting demand for homes, as more buyers qualify, and thus driving up prices.

Crucially, cheaper mortgages don't address the fundamental reason Americans are struggling to buy homes: a shortage of between one and almost five million homes. "Financing is not the solution," said Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow. "We're in this affordability crisis because there's a housing shortage, so changing the loan terms, having different financing products — it doesn't change the fact there aren't enough homes to go around."

Assumable and portable mortgages

Amid the backlash to the 50-year mortgage idea, Pulte posted on X that Fannie and Freddie were "evaluating how to do assumable or portable mortgages, in a safe and sound manner." A few days later, he again posted that the administration is "actively evaluating" portable mortgages.

Portable and assumable mortgages are different things. Both involve locking in older mortgages with below-market rates. Portable mortgages enable homeowners to take their mortgage interest rate with them to a new property, and assumable mortgages allow buyers to take over the seller's mortgage, including its below-market rate.

The US already has many assumable mortgages, though sellers and buyers alike may not know they have that option. Home loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Agriculture are all automatically assumable. Almost a quarter of existing mortgages can be passed from seller to buyer, and a bit less than half of those loans have an interest rate of 4% or below, Business Insider reporter James Rodriguez reported earlier this year.

Have you used creative financing to buy a home? Share your story with this reporter at erelman@businessinsider.com or fill out this form.

If you can obtain one, assumable mortgages can be a great option for buyers. They not only save on interest, they also save on closing costs, as they're exempted from paying for an appraisal or for title insurance, and they aren't on the hook for a mortgage origination fee.

"The best way to help people move regardless of the macro environment is give them access to those low rates," said Raunaq Singh, founder and CEO of Roam, a company that facilitates sales with assumable mortgages.

But there are drawbacks to assumables. The buyer has to qualify for the loan and pay the loan servicer the difference between the home sale price and the remaining mortgage. If the down payment is more than the buyer can afford, they may need a second mortgage, which can be challenging to obtain and would likely come with a higher interest rate.

Portable mortgages, on the other hand, do not yet exist in the US. Housing economists warn that legalizing portable loans could give homeowners who are lucky enough to have an existing mortgage with a low rate an even bigger advantage over first-time homebuyers and others. The dynamic could also drive home prices up further by empowering repeat buyers to spend more.

"That could juice up demand and create more turnover in the market at a time when we're trying to recalibrate," Lambert said.

Builder rate buy-downs

Aside from the options Pulte says he's exploring, there are other ways buyers are finding deals on mortgages.

It's increasingly common to find a below-market interest rate on a newly built home. Over the past few years, homebuilders have increasingly offered incentives to buyers, including mortgage rate buydowns and adjustable-rate mortgages. This reduces monthly payments for buyers while allowing builders to avoid lowering their home prices.

But these rate buydowns could be inflating home prices, a recent Wall Street Journal report found, since they provide a way for builders to offer incentives to buyers while protecting the sticker price on a new home. Large builders, which use rate buydowns more often, saw prices on the first sale of their newly-built homes rise 6% more than existing homes and those built by smaller companies between 2019 and 2024, the American Enterprise Institute recently found.

Seller financing

Another creative financing option — seller financing — involves cutting the bank out of the transaction entirely. In these cases, the seller holds onto the home's deed as the buyer pays them for the property in multiyear installments, in addition to agreed-upon interest. The option appeals to buyers who want a below-market interest rate or who don't qualify for a traditional mortgage, and sellers who are willing to be paid back over time in exchange for also earning interest.

But the practice can be risky. Seller financing often operates as a short-term bridge loan to the buyer. So, if interest rates don't fall during the life of the loan, the buyer could face a significantly higher payment if they opt for a traditional mortgage after a few years of making payments to the seller.

The practice was long more common in poor neighborhoods and has been criticized by federal regulators for exploiting low-income buyers with high interest rates on low-quality homes.

While seller financing has grown in popularity because of high rates in recent years, it's still a niche practice. Just about 1% of home listings mention private financing, according to Realtor.com. But in recent years, the practice has become more popular in higher-end home sales.

"This used to be kind of a sketchy thing that happened with really cheap properties and really under-qualified buyers, and now the median price is on par with what's on the market as a whole," said Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com. "So it's moving upmarket, becoming more widespread, happening on higher dollar properties."

Ryan Leahy and Eric Bennett founded a company based in Austin, Texas, called MORE, that specializes in facilitating seller financing. They deal with higher-end homes — typically valued between $800,000 and $3 million, they said. Their sellers normally have a fair amount of cash and equity in their property, while their buyers are often self-employed with income that's more difficult to account for, making it harder to qualify for a mortgage.

"There's so many people out there self-employed or have income that doesn't qualify for a traditional mortgage, meaning you have influencer income, crypto income, side hustle income," Leahy said.

Mel Dorman bought her first home — an investment property — with seller financing. Since then, she's built a real estate portfolio in Portland, Oregon, and become an advocate for the practice, advising others on how to buy and sell without a bank. Dorman argues that the practice can help keep wealth within a community, rather than having it extracted by a bank.

"When somebody does a seller finance transaction, their payment is literally going to a person who lives nearby, who's probably local, and it's funding their ability to downsize, to retire, to sell their rental property, to stop being a landlord, whatever is their need for selling," she said. "Likewise, it creates a pathway to ownership to Americans who are increasingly locked out because of bank criteria and the cost of capital, interest rates, and prices."

When describing the health of the US economy, there is a temptation among economists, market analysts, and politicians to argue that the only true picture of our current situation is a sweeping portrait — only by looking at the broadest of aggregate statistics can you determine the state of play, they argue. But the wide view can ignore important developments unfolding under the surface. Sometimes, even the healthiest-looking person might have high cholesterol.

Right now, the economy seems OK on the surface. GDP growth has been running north of 3% for the last two quarters. In the labor market, the boilerplate appears to be that conditions are gradually cooling, but nothing more, nothing less. For example, despite the slowdown in new hiring, the unemployment rate of 4.4% is still low by historical standards. But there are serious dangers lurking beneath the surface of our economy, and it is better to clearly identify them than to ignore them in favor of broad aggregate measures.

Major employers in industries like homebuilding and restaurants are looking shaky, and they offer ominous signs about the direction of the overall economy. By getting a sense of what sectors and industries are struggling, you can get a forward-looking sense of the economy's trajectory and a clearer-eyed view of the possibility of recession.

---

The problem with relying on broad bundles of data is that things typically appear placid on an aggregate level right up until things go wrong. Take the turning of the job market tide. In a genuine downturn, the consensus typically assumes a gradual, linear increase in unemployment, similar to the slow, steady grind we are currently experiencing. In reality, however, the risk is nonlinear. When things truly turn south, it usually comes as an abrupt shift that results in a negative self-reinforcing feedback loop. Instead of a slow increase in the unemployment rate of 0.1 percentage points a month, you begin to see a jump of 0.2 points one month and another 0.3 points the next. The ranks of the jobless swell at an ever-increasing pace. There is no real way of knowing when labor market conditions will transition from linear to nonlinear. Historically, the consensus never sees the shift until well after it has arrived. That things seem to be evolving in a stable fashion now doesn't negate the possibility of an unstable move later.

This is why, when making predictions about the future path of the economy, it is essential to get under the hood. And right now, the closer you look, the more worrying things become. Don't just take my word for it, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently acknowledged that sectors of the economy are already in serious downturn territory.

"I think we are in good shape, but I think that there are sectors of the economy that are in recession," Bessent told CNN in an early November interview.

While Bessent didn't go into much detail about the parts of the American economy that concern him, a close read reveals the most worrying signals are coming from four major sources of employment:

• Residential housing: There are several signs that employment in home construction is about to hit the skids. The elevated stock of unsold homes means homebuilders will need to throttle back on breaking new ground and focus on selling the inventory they have on hand. Building permits also indicate a potential weakness in future construction activity. Add this up, and it's clear that the industry is likely holding onto too many workers relative to its current activity levels.

  

• Commercial real estate: Investment in structures for business has been declining for the last six quarters, per the latest GDP data, even accounting for the massive buildout of AI data centers. Architectural billings, an index that tracks nonresidential construction, released by the American Institute of Architects, remain sluggish. Given that a building first has to be drawn up before it can be built, weakness at this planning stage suggests there is no coming boom in commercial real estate construction. Based on the latest release, it appears that soft conditions are likely to persist next year.

• Restaurants: We've seen major casual dining establishments, such as Chipotle and Sweetgreen, post weaker sales growth in recent quarters, largely due to weakness in certain consumer cohorts, including 25-34 year olds. Despite this, many chains have said they plan to absorb higher food input prices caused by supply shocks, thereby squeezing their margins. Slower sales and slimmer profits are not a recipe for more hiring. In fact, declining measures of productivity per worker in food services & drinking places suggest that many of these restaurants are overstaffed and may be a signal that layoffs are on the horizon.

  

• Government: Until now, most of the pressure on public sector employment has been at the federal government level. However, state and local governments are facing pressures as they exhaust COVID-era funding. Given these tough decisions, job losses in state and local governments are a reasonable baseline.

Beyond these big four, there are industries with a smaller employment footprint that also appear to be softening:

• Freight: There are not as many goods moving around the country. Ship counts from Asia to the US are down roughly 30% from last year. Railcar loadings are down roughly 6% against last year. The trucking industry also continues to see shrinking capacity. If there are fewer things to move around the country, then the industry will likewise need fewer drivers, loaders, and various workers. Idle trains and empty containers don't need a lot of people to mind them.
• Mining: Crude oil prices are somewhat below the level needed to profitably invest in new drilling wells, so energy companies are unlikely to hire new staff in this area. The same is true for wood products. Lumber prices are below the levels at which most sawmills can turn a profit. Mining and logging are a relatively small part of private employment, but they're decreasing, not increasing.

• Higher education: Declining enrollment, budget cuts, and reduced federal research funding are taxing the higher education sector. Not surprisingly, more colleges and universities are turning to staffing cuts. Employment across colleges and universities has remained flat so far in 2025 compared to last year, but given the budget shrinkage, it's hard to see how this resilience persists.

---

It's taken a while to unfold, but the labor slowdown has played out in a standard way: job openings have declined, hiring rates have cooled as companies have slowed their pace of recruiting, and we're now beginning to see an increase in layoffs from historically low levels. The workers at the margins — like younger people and Black Americans — have felt it more than those in more secure positions, which is also not unusual.

Recession-like dynamics across several different industries increase the risk of additional layoffs in those same key sectors in the quarters ahead. Because the hiring rate is low, a small increase in layoffs may have a disproportionately large effect on unemployment. Just because conditions seem to be gradually cooling today does not close the door on a more abrupt shift in labor market conditions later.

The labor market remains a source of downside risk for the broader economy. Because consumption has been a source of support for the economy, a deeper slowdown in the jobs market would create a nasty downward spiral: People cut back on their spending as they lose their jobs, which dries up sources of revenue for businesses that then lay off more workers in response, which further shrinks the amount of household spending, and so on.

Where all this ends up is still up for debate. But while America's economic ocean appears placid at 30,000 feet, beneath the surface, several riptides are brewing.

---

Neil Dutta is head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research.

• Both sides of our family live thousands of miles away, making it difficult for us to get together.
• It was usually just the four of us celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas in our home each year.
• We opened up the holidays to friends and friends of friends, and wouldn't go back to the way things were.

A 28-year-old international college student lives in our home in the suburbs of New York City. He's smart, fun, hilarious, and very low-maintenance.

So, when he made a big deal of asking me a favor last month, I was surprised to see his face looking so serious. He seemed to choose his words carefully, "Would it be OK if one of my friends came for Thanksgiving?"

"Of course," I said, without hesitation. Then I gently scolded him for thinking, even for a second, that I might say "no." I assumed he'd been around me long enough to know that I not only love having non-family members visit for the holidays, but I live for it.

I live far away from my family

I've only spent Christmas with my family 3 times in the past 20 years. There are complex reasons for this, which other immigrants like me to the US might find easier to understand.

First, there has been a 3,000-mile distance between my father, mother, sister, and brother-in-law and me ever since I moved to the US from my native UK in May of 2005. During those 20 years, we've spent Christmas together only three times — twice in Northern England, and once in Stowe, Vermont, when we combined the festivities with a skiing trip.

The jollity could feel a bit forced

My husband's side of the family lives on the West Coast — almost as far away as mine — so we've celebrated very few holidays with my in-laws as well.

For years, our Thanksgiving and Christmas tables were set for just four — my husband, our daughter, our son, and me. While I was grateful that we had each other, these intimate occasions sometimes felt too, well, intimate. The conversation was run-of-the-mill, and the jollity felt a bit forced.

As time went on, after the initial burst of good food aor gift-giving, both the third Thursday of November and December 25 became less distinguishable from other days.

The kids would get bored and bicker. I'd complain because my husband wanted to watch American football — never my thing — on the TV. It made me feel homesick in New York and left me feeling alienated.

Then 2020 changed everything. COVID was a terrible ordeal, but it created opportunities I hadn't anticipated.

By then, our immediate family had grown to five members because we had a new au pair from Chile. At last, we had someone else to celebrate the holidays with. It was made all the more special because we went all out on the decorations and traditions to show her the true essence of the American holidays.

The dynamics changed with more people around

But, to my delight, there were a total of seven place settings for Thanksgiving that November. Our au pair invited her best friend, and I invited a colleague who was unable to be with his family due to COVID-19 restrictions.

After the meal, we were joined by a second colleague and the son of a friend who made a last-minute train journey from Brooklyn to visit on a whim.

The dynamics changed. Each of the nine people at the gathering brought something special along with them. The conversation was full of anecdotes and stories we'd never heard before; the kids were fascinated by the company and didn't even think to whine; we even played English parlor games like charades. I didn't feel homesick at all.

I want to invite as many friends and friends of friends as possible

It was the best Thanksgiving of my life — an experience I wanted us to repeat on subsequent holidays. Ever since, we've made a point of inviting as many friends and friends of friends as we can possibly manage.

I'll never go back to hosting "just us," and I look forward to welcoming our brand-new guest next week.

• Smaller, boutique consulting firms are leveraging AI to compete with established players.
• Many of these firms have a narrow focus, like helping companies with pricing or cost-cutting.
• Their methods aim to make consulting accessible to a broader range of clients.

Two sets of players have long ruled the consulting world.

There is MBB, which is McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group. And then there is the Big Four: PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and Ernst & Young.

Now, a new wave of AI-driven startups is challenging that dominance, trying to make consulting services more accessible.

Many of the founders of these new firms come from the traditional consulting realm. They told Business Insider their experiences not only give them marketable skills but have also helped them identify new opportunities in the industry.

They are boutique firms. They are much smaller than the established ones, often run by teams ranging from just a few people to a few hundred. They're also more specialized, focusing on areas like pricing strategy, cost reduction, or refining slide decks.

And, importantly, they are all in on AI.

Many of them said their methods help them reduce old-school bureaucracy, offer more competitive rates, and make the human side of consulting work easier.

Here are the boutique firms that, to varying degrees, are challenging the classic consulting model.

Xavier AI

Xavier AI describes itself as the world's first AI strategy consultant.

According to Joao Filipe, cofounder of Xavier and a former McKinsey consultant, the Xavier AI chatbot can provide clear, actionable business knowledge and deliverables, like a 60-page business plan, a sales presentation, or a detailed marketing strategy.

Filipe said Xavier AI has its own proprietary reasoning engine that is tailor-made for business use cases and can provide detailed sources without the hallucination you might find with other chatbots. He said Xavier can provide both strategy recommendations and actionable plans for implementation.

"99.9% of businesses could really never afford McKinsey or any of the MBBs," Filipe told BI. "We created Xavier AI so that anyone could have the power of a consulting firm at their hands when they need it."

Xavier AI officially launched in April, but Filipe said he's been piloting it with different clients, including an international bank using it to research potential clients and better understand their needs.

Since its launch, Filipe says business has been booming. He said the company's revenue has doubled month over month, and he expects that growth to continue through the rest of 2025.

NextStrat

Nexstrat.ai positions its product as a multifunctional agent that can automate many of the typical tasks of a consultant.

Nexstrat's cofounder and CEO, Arda Ecevit, who spent years at Bain & Company and Deloitte before founding the company in 2024, said the platform mirrors the "hypothesis-based problem solving" typically used by consulting firms.

Behind the scenes, the platform leverages multiple agents to fulfill the functions of a project manager, a chief strategy officer, and an AI advisor, to help teams make better decisions and solve business issues, Ecevit told Business Insider.

Ecevit said the platform has already worked with some leading companies, including some among the Fortune 500, and even some major consulting firms, which he said have been testing his firm's technology on things like data analysis, research, and action planning.

Consulting IQ

Consulting IQ was born out of the pandemic as an antidote to the number of small and midsize businesses failing.

"We saw so many small and midsize businesses collapsing for reasons beyond their control," Diego Medone, the founder and CEO of Consulting IQ, told Business Insider.

There are an estimated 400 million companies around the world, 99% of which belong in the micro, small, or midsize category, Medone said. But, he said, 65% of small and midsize businesses fade away before year five.

"That's 260 million companies worldwide," he said.

Medone, a longtime management consultant who rose to partner at KPMG, began conducting research.

He said he and his team of former McKinsey, BCG, and Bain consultants conducted 10,000 interviews with small and midsize companies in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and the Pacific. The aim was to learn firsthand from business owners the challenges and risks they face each day.

They used that information to officially launch Consulting IQ in 2024. The platform positions itself as an AI-powered boutique consultant dedicated to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

Once a user registers on the platform, they provide a few basic details about their business — who they are, where they operate, and their challenges. Then they'll see a list of over 5,000 preloaded prompts in topics ranging from branding to business strategy to sales. Users can converse with the tool for insights on how to optimize their operations.

The team's consultants are always refining the AI platform, Medone said. "The consultants aren't doing anything manually during interactions — that's 100% AI," he said. "What they are doing is permanently fine-tuning the algorithms, filtering what's important and what's not, to avoid hallucinations and ensure relevance."

Consulting IQ runs on a subscription model starting at $99 a month. The Miami-based company has partnered with Visa and Mastercard.

Perceptis

Alibek Dostiyarov, a former McKinsey consultant, and Yersultan Sapar, a former engineer at Apple, cofounded Perceptis.

The company aims to help smaller and midsize firms compete with bigger industry players by using AI to streamline some of the more tedious processes in consulting, like proposal writing.

Perceptis is now focused on the business development side of consulting. Its AI-powered operating system can do industry research, identify opportunities that align with their client's skillset and background, and create detailed, custom proposals that the client can use to win a job.

Dostiyarov told BI earlier this year that a lot of the internal processes completed at consulting firms are heavy with manual labor and "lend themselves almost perfectly to what GenAI is capable of doing."

He also said Perceptis could make smaller firms, which don't typically have internal AI tools, more competitive in the market.

The company told BI this week that while initially serving boutique management consultancies, it's now quickly expanding to serve IT services, system integrators, software developers, financial services, design firms, and real estate agencies.

Perceptis had raised $3.6 million in funding as of January.

Genpact

Genpact, a professional services company that expects to generate $5 billion in revenue this year, has made a major push over the past year to position itself as a leader in AI strategy.

Sanjeev Vohra, the company's chief technology officer — who spent more than two decades at Accenture — said AI transformations have to begin internally.

Last year, Genpact launched "Client Zero," an initiative to design, test, and refine AI solutions in-house before rolling them out to its 800-plus clients.

One example is "Amber," an AI-powered chief listening officer that has handled more than 500,000 employee interactions in the past year.

"She's dynamic. She works 24/7. She doesn't rest, and she's talking to people," Vohra said. Genpact has also deployed a suite of AI finance tools that it says can cut invoice processing from weeks to hours.

Since launching Client Zero, Vohra said, Genpact has trimmed nearly $40 million from its operating expenses. Now, the company is piloting those same solutions with clients.

Vohra said clients want to see the value they are getting from investing in this technology.

"Let's assume you're spending $100 right now for a certain process — can it happen in $80? Can it happen in $70 in the next one or two years?" He said. "That's what the C-suite is looking for."

SIB

SIB specializes in helping clients like restaurant groups, hospitals, universities, and government agencies find savings in fixed costs — expenses that remain static regardless of how much a company produces.

SIB CEO Shannon Copeland told BI that these are often found in areas that "escape scrutiny," like fees for telecommunications, utilities, waste removal, shipping, and software licenses. According to his LinkedIn profile, Copeland is an alum of Accenture and Deloitte.

SIB has grown since its 2008 launch in Charleston, South Carolina. It's now a national firm serving hundreds of clients, ranging from Kroger and Marriott to governments like San Diego County. It recently added over a dozen Fortune 500 companies and private equity firms. Since its launch, SIB says it has identified more than $8 billion in cost savings.

Copeland said that, unlike traditional consulting firms, SIB operates under a contingency model. "If we don't find savings, we don't get paid," he said, adding that the firm doesn't charge fees upfront.

SIB uses AI agents to monitor invoices, vendor contracts, and billing patterns. The firm's consultants use the resulting insights to negotiate better contract terms or restructure their vendor relationships.

"You could think of us as part AI, part old-school operator," Copeland said.

In addition to cost-cutting, the firm also focuses on strengthening relationships, a cornerstone of traditional consulting.

"We actually encourage vendors and clients to return to high-trust, high-accountability partnerships by using data as the starting point for better collaboration," Copeland said. "Working with robots actually makes humans listen to each other more. It's ironic, but it works."

Monevate

Monevate's motto is simple — focus on one thing and do it well.

The firm focuses on pricing strategy for software-as-a-service and high-growth tech companies. It also works with private equity firms to assess the commercial viability of potential investments.

According to his LinkedIn profile, James Wilton, an alum of McKinsey, Kearney, and ZS Associates, founded Monevate in 2021. Wilton now serves as the Firm's managing partner. The firm has 16 full-time consultants and has helped over 50 SaaS, tech, and AI companies in the past three years.

"Most of our clients are backed by venture capital or private equity, and increasingly, we're working with teams building AI products and features," Wilton told BI by email.

Wilton said clients usually turn to Monevate when they've hit a wall with their current strategy because their product has changed or the market has evolved. "We design and implement fully-baked pricing strategies, including packaging, price architecture, and price levels," he said.

Wilton said the impetus to launch the firm came from the gaps he saw in traditional consulting. "Clients often complained about recommendations that never went anywhere, high fees that only the largest companies could afford, no skin in the game, inflexible delivery models, and highly variable service quality depending on the team," he said.

Monevate keeps its focus narrow, but that's allowed even its most junior consultants to become "deep pricing experts," Wilton said.

He added that the firm's work is "narrow by consulting standards, and it means walking away from other kinds of work, but it allows us to be truly great at what we do."

Keystone

Keystone is a strategy consulting firm that advises technology companies, life science companies, governments, and law firms. Its clients include major corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Intel, Novartis, and Amgen.

The firm was founded in 2003 by Greg Richards, a mechanical engineer by training and an alum of Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, who now serves as an advisor to Harvard Business School, and Marco Iansiti, a physicist and professor at Harvard Business School.

Iansiti told BI that Keystone tends to be more "geeky and nerdy" than traditional consulting firms. "We love to kind of get deep on the tech side of things," he said. The team includes data scientists, AI experts, and academics.

While many consulting firms are embracing generative AI, which is often used to automate day-to-day work like writing emails or reviewing documents and contracts, Iansiti said Keystone is focusing more on operational AI.

Operational AI is used to transform core business functions like managing supply chains, inventory, pricing, and forecasting. In 2023, the firm launched "CoreAI," a team dedicated to using AI to automate and improve these areas.

"We get excited about the term deep enterprise on this," Iansiti said. "Deep enterprise is really the idea of using deep learning models that are embedded around crucial operating processes in the enterprise."

The firm's "value add," he said, lies in building this kind of "pretty unique operational AI" for its clients.

Fusion Collective

Fusion Collective is an IT consulting firm that offers a range of consulting services to clients, including strategy and management advice, cloud transformation, and AI alignment.

The firm was founded by Blake Crawford, who worked on enterprise architecture at MTV Networks and Viacom, and Yvette Schmitter, an alum of Deloitte, PwC, and Amazon Web Services, where she led three cloud migrations, including the largest in the company's history.

Schmitter said that in her experience, clients are seeking AI advice from consulting firms before they're ready.

"We have organizations who are running at 99 miles an hour, hiring these firms to build these AI strategy documents, 165 pages of beautiful PowerPoints, right?" she said. But these companies still can't "operationalize" AI, she said. "Why? Because the basic infrastructure isn't there. Any type of vulnerability that they have in security, their cloud infrastructure, is just exacerbated by AI."

In the end, clients chose consultants based on trust, their networks, and existing business relationships, she said.

"I really believe that a true partner is one who's going to tell you the truth. Tell it like it is even if it hurts right?" Schmitter said. To that end, she said she asks clients who come to her about AI strategy to have a solid grasp of their infrastructure footprint, data governance policies, and security before they accelerate adoption.

The bottom line is that Fusion Collective likes to keep its advice real. "If companies have not mastered the fundamentals, you're not ready for AI, and you're not ready for an army of consultants to come in to do stuff," Schmitter said.

Slideworks

Slideworks isn't necessarily going after consulting firms' business, though it focuses on something many of the big guys are known for: making powerful slides.

Slideworks offers what it calls "high-end" PowerPoint templates and "toolkits" created by former consultants for Bain, BCG, and McKinsey.

When you work as a consultant at a top-tier firm, "you are schooled every day in best practice presentations and slide design," the company says on its website. The idea is to offer access to a library of slides and spreadsheets for areas including strategy, supply chain management, and "digital transformation."

In a February blog post, Alexandra Hazard Kampmann, a Slideworks partner, wrote that "management consultants are often made fun of as 'slide monkeys.'" Yet, she added, the slide is a "crucial reason" why McKinsey and BCG consultants have so many Fortune 500 companies as clients.

Slideworks offers a "consulting toolkit," which contains 205 slides and costs $129. It also offers a "consulting proposal," which has 242 slides plus an Excel model and costs $149.

There are also operations, mergers and acquisitions, business strategy, and product strategy templates.

Slideworks says it has more than 4,500 customers globally, including Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and the professional-services firms Deloitte and EY.

Unity Advisory

Some top UK executives from Ernst & Young and PwC are joining forces to launch a new firm called Unity Advisory in June, the Financial Times reported. The firm will be chaired by Steve Varley, who spent nearly 19 years at EY, and led by CEO Marissa Thomas, who worked at PwC for over 30 years, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

It is backed by up to $300 million from Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm, and will focus on tax and accounting services, technology consulting, and mergers and acquisitions.

"CFOs are open to a new proposition," Varley told the FT. "The Big Four are a classy bunch of service providers, but people are looking for a proposition that is super client-centric, has really low administrative cost, is AI-led rather than based on legacy infrastructure and, crucially, has no conflicts."

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the monthly pricing for Consulting IQ. It starts at $99 per month, not $9. It also misstated the firm's partnership with JP Morgan, which is its primary operating bank.