{"id":504535,"date":"2026-05-27T03:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T03:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/504535\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T03:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T03:50:15","slug":"big-four-consulting-has-2-ai-nightmares-kpmgs-answer-to-both-is-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/504535\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Four consulting has 2 AI nightmares. KPMG’s answer to both is the same"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fear stalking the consulting industry right now comes in two flavors. The first is that AI can\u2019t be trusted \u2014 that the same tools promising to transform client work will confidently produce wrong answers, expose firms to liability, and erode the hard-won trust that is the entire basis of the business. The second fear is almost the opposite: that AI works just fine, and that the companies building it will eventually use their growing power \u2014 and consulting firms\u2019 own client data \u2014 to\u00a0cut the middleman out entirely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Into the midst of this anxiety strode big blue with big news: KPMG<\/a> dropped a bombshell on Monday,\u00a0announcing a global alliance with Anthropic<\/a>\u00a0to embed Claude, the AI company\u2019s flagship model, directly into Digital Gateway, the client delivery platform where KPMG\u2019s 276,000-person global workforce does its actual work \u2014 advising, structuring deals, preparing taxes for some of the world\u2019s largest companies. PwC announced its own Claude deal<\/a>\u00a0in the same week, although KPMG\u2019s is unique in its \u201cpowered by Claude\u201d capability and full integration into KPMG\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n

Every employee, in every one of the 138 countries where KPMG operates, will now have access to Claude. The firm is also becoming Anthropic\u2019s preferred consulting partner for private equity, meaning it will help PE firms deploy AI inside their portfolio companies. It is, by any measure, the most sweeping AI commitment any Big Four firm has made.<\/p>\n

Fortune spoke with three of the executives who built the deal to unpack why KPMG is embracing the disruption, even as outside critics are puzzled that AI is getting into the consulting business. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick<\/a>, the thought leader who coined the \u201cjagged frontier\u201d framing for AI progress, said on Thursday at the Sana AI Summit that it\u2019s \u201cweird\u201d that AI companies are building their own consulting arms to do AI deployment, noting that it contradicts the value proposition of generative AI. \u201cIf the models are so good that you think they\u2019re going to destroy all white-collar jobs, shouldn\u2019t they also be able to help you deploy systems?\u201d<\/p>\n

Chamath Palihapitiya<\/a>, the one-time SPAC king and Silicon Valley gadfly, offered a hot take in a widely shared post last week<\/a>, warning that consulting firms doing business with Anthropic and its ilk was like \u201cletting the fox into the hen house.\u201d To the KPMG executives who struck the deal, it\u2019s a \u201cgame-changer,\u201d but in what direction remains an open question. <\/p>\n

Only 5% of interactions lead to meaningful outcomes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rema Serafi<\/a>, the Vice Chair of Tax at KPMG US, was in Miami when the deal went public \u2014 announced live from the stage at the firm\u2019s annual Tax Summit, in front of 900 attendees, half of them clients, with Anthropic executives joining her on stage. She described the moment as \u201cmonumental\u201d and said KPMG is excited. \u201cWe know that this is a game-changer. We know that this novel approach \u2014\u00a0this is different, it felt different. People know that we\u2019re not talking about a chatbot on the side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But she was also strikingly candid about how far the industry still has to go.<\/p>\n

Serafi referred to joint research <\/a>by KPMG and the University of Texas at Austin<\/a>, published in\u00a0the March issue of Harvard Business Review, which analyzed over 1.4 million interactions between KPMG professionals and AI. \u201cOnly 5% of those interactions were people getting meaningful outcomes,\u201d she pointed out. The number sounds alarming and aligns exactly with what Fortune reported last summer<\/a>: 95% of corporate generative AI pilots failed, although several critics have questioned that methodology, including Wharton\u2019s Ethan Mollick<\/a>.<\/p>\n

KPMG defined meaningful adoption in the form of \u201csophisticated AI users,\u201d or employees who were not defined by technical skill or frequency of use, but by\u00a0patterns of engagement. They treat AI as a \u201creasoning partner\u201d to think\u00a0with, aligning closely with what AI expert Vivienne Ming calls \u201ccyborgs,\u201d<\/a> or people who lose track of what ideas came from their own human brains or their AI partners. When asked about that phrasing, Serafi preferred the term \u201chelpers\u201d \u2014 not replacing professionals, but teams of AI agents working alongside them, handling the repetitive steps in the process so that humans can focus on the work that actually requires judgment. <\/p>\n

The 5% sophistication number was framed as a positive by Serafi. \u201cTo me, that\u2019s actually encouraging,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got these really powerful tools out there, and we have people who are ambitious and they want to learn how to use the tools but we haven\u2019t maximized the utility they get out of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

That gap is precisely what KPMG is trying to close \u2014 and it\u2019s why, Serafi argues, the deal with Anthropic is less about technology than it is about talent. As Fortune reported in January<\/a>, the firm has developed a \u201cThink, Prompt, Check\u201d training methodology for all of its professionals, drilling into them not just how to use AI but how to interrogate what it gives back. KPMG says it\u2019s meant to reinforce disciplined, responsible use of AI, starting with human thinking, using AI to expand perspective and test\u00a0ideas, and then applying rigorous judgment and ethical review to\u00a0validate\u00a0outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The firm has also built what Serafi calls TaxSIM, a program developed with a company called Centaurion<\/a> that uses AI-generated client scenarios to give junior professionals the equivalent of four years of client interaction in a fraction of the time. \u201cWhat would have taken a professional maybe four years to get to the next level,\u201d she said, \u201cwe\u2019ve simulated through AI.\u201d Serafi noted that KPMG will offer the same simulations to clients. \u201cThey\u2019re really excited about it.\u201d When asked what this means for junior workers, KPMG said its \u201ccommitment to people at the center of our business strategy remains unchanged\u201d and it will continue to hire across the business to meet client demands.<\/p>\n

The reason KPMG is betting on this \u2014 and the reason Anthropic chose KPMG over other Big Four firms \u2014 is partly philosophical. Steve Corfield<\/a>, Anthropic\u2019s head of partnerships, told Fortune that the firm spent considerable time mapping exactly where Claude\u2019s capabilities were the strongest fit before settling on KPMG, along with its sterling reputation. \u201cThere are a number of big partners in the world that we need to be affiliated to and KPMG is one of those partners.\u201d Also, he noted that KPMG is a leader, especially in tax, one of the most deliberate and highly regulated professional services domains \u2014 precisely the kind of high-stakes, traceable environment where Claude\u2019s long-context reasoning and auditable outputs offer a genuine advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Serafi described the alignment of values as central to the partnership. \u201cTheir entire mission is to build their capabilities in a trusted way that creates opportunities for humans and doesn\u2019t take those opportunities away,\u201d she said. \u201cThat mission is very critical to their core values. And that really resonates with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corfield broke the concept of enterprise trust into three distinct layers, each a separate question a potential partner must answer before committing. The first is whether Anthropic actually means what it says about safety \u2014 not as a marketing posture but as a governing principle that holds even under competitive pressure. \u201cA lot of people say they\u2019re mission-led,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat does that mean in practice when you\u2019re really pressed on it?\u201d He argued that Anthropic has demonstrated the answer by taking public positions on safety it didn\u2019t have to take, at moments when doing so had a real cost.<\/p>\n

The second layer is continuity: if KPMG is embedding Claude into Digital Gateway, they are making a long-duration bet that Anthropic will still be building the world\u2019s best model when the next contract cycle comes around. \u201cImagine what\u2019s gonna happen with the next iteration,\u201d Corfield said. \u201cYou\u2019re making those bets on a model provider.\u201d The third layer is the most granular \u2014 whether Claude is actually good at the specific tasks the partner needs it to do. For KPMG, that meant tax: long-context reasoning across complex documents, traceable and auditable outputs, and an improving agentic capability that can execute multi-step workflows without losing the thread. Each layer has to hold independently. It\u2019s not as simple as saying: \u201chey, trust us.\u201d <\/p>\n

For its part, KPMG told Fortune that its client data will not be used to train Claude, and it will sit within KPMG\u2019s \u201csecure, proprietary environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You can\u2019t think of them as the competitor<\/strong>\u2018<\/p>\n

Carole Streicher<\/a>, who leads advisory for KPMG\u2019s private equity practice, was direct about the anxiety that venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya\u00a0warned about, with the fox entering the hen house. The critique is that the AI labs are openly funding competing consulting ventures while using firms\u2019 own engagement data to train their systems (an argument that media companies, with their own experiments, know well). <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Streicher insisted this line of thinking is a mistake. \u201cYou can\u2019t think of them as the competitor,\u201d she said, referring to hyperscalers. \u201cThere are strengths that they absolutely have that are different than our strengths.\u201d Fittingly for a private equity advisor, she invoked an M&A analogy: just as activist investors eventually dismantled the conglomerates of an earlier era by forcing companies back to their core strengths, she argued the current moment rewards specialization over trying to do everything yourself. \u201cWhen we can bring these teams together and work in these ecosystems together, we bring the best of both worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corfield, a tech veteran for the last 25 years and counting, has been at Anthropic just over six months, running global business development and the alliances and channels business, and echoed this framing from his side of the table \u2014 while acknowledging that the competitive anxiety is real. He said some displacement is \u201clikely inevitable, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019re necessarily [coming] as fast as people necessarily think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corfield has a longer lens on that question than most. He was at Sun Microsystems in 1999, when the company\u2019s famous slogan \u2014 \u201cthe network is the computer\u201d \u2014 was widely dismissed. \u201cGuess<\/a> what? The network was 100% the computer,\u201d he said, with a trace of vindication, noting his old employer was \u201cahead of its time.\u201d He\u2019s careful not to over-map the parallel \u2014 \u201cI think this is slightly different,\u201d he said \u2014 but the underlying conviction is the same: the people who think the transformation is overstated are probably making the same mistake the skeptics made then.<\/p>\n

What distinguishes the KPMG deal from a standard partnership announcement, in Corfield\u2019s view, is precisely that it is not one. Most alliance announcements describe co-selling arrangements and joint go-to-market motions. This one has KPMG building Claude directly into Digital Gateway \u2014 the actual platform its professionals use every day to deliver client work. \u201cThis isn\u2019t something that\u2019s just like a proof of concept,\u201d Corfield said. \u201cThis is something that is going to be hardcore to [KPMG\u2019s] tax business.\u201d He described it as part of Anthropic\u2019s \u201cpillar three\u201d strategy: not just helping partners become more productive internally, but embedding Claude into the IP-based technologies partners use to serve their own clients. \u201cThat\u2019s the differentiator with this announcement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Both Serafi and Streicher confirmed that the KPMG-Anthropic deal is not exclusive\u2014the firm sees this as part of an AI ecosystem that includes Microsoft\u2019s Copilot and Google\u2019s Gemini. \u201cThis is an and, not an instead of,\u201d she said \u2014 language that Serafi echoed almost verbatim in a separate interview. Both executives were unmistakably coordinated on the additive nature of this deal, in KPMG\u2019s view. KPMG told Fortune that its \u201clong-standing alliances with Microsoft<\/a>, Google<\/a> and other leading technology providers continue,\u201d and this deal builds on a network of strategic alliances, emerging technology partners, industry specialists and proprietary IP. <\/p>\n

Streicher was also clear that the private equity angle, which received less attention in Monday\u2019s announcement, is in some ways the biggest bet. KPMG\u2019s new\u00a0KPMG Blaze<\/a>\u00a0offering will embed Claude Code inside PE portfolio companies to help them modernize IT systems, for instance, to get these IT systems to talk to each other. \u201cWithin private equity specifically,\u201d she said, \u201cAnthropic saw us as a really great market leader in this space and saw that what we have from a market perspective \u2014 the market share, the way we\u2019re serving private equity \u2014 brought together with their technology created an opportunity to really focus in on this space.\u201d <\/p>\n

Streicher declined to comment on how the private equity component of this partnership will interact with Anthropic\u2019s eye-catching $1.5 billion move<\/a> into the private equity space earlier in the month. Corfield said that venture is specifically targeted at mid-market portfolio companies, and it came about as Anthropic was \u201cworking with our [partner] PE companies, looking at a lot of their portfolio companies within that mid-market.\u201d He said he did not think that many of Anthropic\u2019s partners, like KPMG, were \u201coverly concerned\u201d about it. \u201cThere\u2019s so much pull in the market right now that there\u2019s no way anybody can\u2019t play \u2014\u00a0or nobody\u2019s losing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other view<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a version of this story in which KPMG has made a catastrophic mistake. Capgemini<\/a> Chief Strategy Officer Fernando Alvarez,\u00a0speaking to Fortune\u2018s Jeremy Kahn in March<\/a>, put the structural reality plainly: OpenAI has roughly 70 \u201cforward-deployed engineers\u201d capable of going on-site with enterprise clients; Anthropic has a similar number. The consulting firms need the AI labs, but the AI labs only need the consulting firms for now. The power balance of that relationship is very much unresolved.<\/p>\n

Both Serafi and Streicher said that although the fast pace of innovation makes the timeline five years from now incredibly opaque, they are confident that KPMG and Anthropic will still be thriving as partners.<\/p>\n

Corfield, for his part, offered a version of the same confidence \u2014 and pointed to what Anthropic sees as its own long-term hedge. The company has launched and is still building what it calls the Claude Partner Network<\/a>, a structured global ecosystem with tiered certifications, a skills registry and an enablement platform. The design principle is that the certification belongs to the individual, not the company \u2014 a global system of record that lets Anthropic track who is trained, at what level, and on what. Anthropic needs to make sure that partners are certified, enabled and skilled, Corfield said, and Anthropic will strive to be there for additional support and usage.<\/p>\n

Both executives described to\u00a0Fortune\u00a0that they see domain expertise as a durable moat. Frontier AI labs don\u2019t know how to optimize a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, how to structure a tax position for a multinational operating in 138 jurisdictions, or how to navigate the judgment calls that define the difference between good legal advice and liability, while KPMG does. If the promise of AI is to unlock\u00a0more\u00a0of that expertise \u2014 to give junior professionals thousands of simulated client reps before they ever sit across a table from a real CFO, to let a tax partner\u00a0build a new AI agent in minutes instead of weeks<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 then the bet looks less like capitulation than like leverage.<\/p>\n

But the deeper argument KPMG is making is about what happens to the humans inside these firms \u2014 and it\u2019s one that runs counter to much of the prevailing anxiety about AI and white-collar work. Within a year or two, Serafi predicted, client-delivery professionals at KPMG \u2014 the tax partners, the advisory leads, the deal structurers \u2014 will be building their own AI tools directly on top of Digital Gateway, without routing requests through a separate technology team. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be in a world where everybody knows how to use AI,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s going to be table stakes. But there are going to be people who, depending on how much they embrace our capabilities, are going to be provided more access to those capabilities so that they can build on the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

That distinction matters more than it might sound. Researchers at Wharton have coined the term \u201ccognitive surrender<\/a>\u201d to describe what happens when workers simply defer to AI outputs without applying independent judgment \u2014 an extreme form of automation bias that, left unchecked, hollows out the very expertise that makes a consulting firm valuable in the first place. KPMG\u2019s \u201cThink, Prompt, Check\u201d framework is, at its core, an institutional bet against cognitive surrender: a conviction that the firms that win won\u2019t be the ones that deploy the most AI, but the ones that train their people to use it most critically.<\/p>\n

Alvarez, at Capgemini, framed the same insight from a client perspective. The conversation enterprises want to have, he told Fortune, is not about how many agents you can spin up or how you orchestrate them. \u201cThe conversation is, do you have the domain expertise to understand my problem?\u201d The implication is that the consulting industry\u2019s survival isn\u2019t threatened by AI per se \u2014 it\u2019s threatened by consulting firms that mistake access to AI for expertise itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowledge continues to be gold,\u201d Serafi said. \u201cThe value our clients get is not from technology. The value they get is from our knowledge, from our expertise, from our ability to sit around the table and have a conversation with them about how to help their business.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question is whether that argument is a confident strategy or a very expensive hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fear stalking the consulting industry right now comes in two flavors. The first is that AI can\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,6006,289,290,66986,18,19,17,1126,254,82],"class_list":["post-504535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-consulting","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kpmg","tag-private-equity","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116644507549041376","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}