AI consulting is quietly changing how businesses seek expertise. Artificial intelligence begins by summarising meetings, organising data, and answering questions. Then, over time, it starts moving into spaces traditionally occupied by consultants, helping businesses analyse problems, evaluate opportunities, and make decisions.
Investor Kevin O’Leary recently pointed to this shift while discussing companies within his portfolio. Businesses that once hired consultants for research, strategy, and operational advice are increasingly turning to AI first. According to O’Leary, the change has become particularly visible over the last two years.
For decades, consulting firms occupied a unique place within the corporate world. They were brought in when companies needed an outside perspective, whether it involved entering a new market, improving efficiency, or identifying growth opportunities. Their value rested on gathering information, analysing it, and transforming complexity into action.
AI arrives in that same territory from a different direction.
Rather than operating as an external advisor, it sits within the organisation itself. It can process large volumes of information, identify patterns, compare scenarios, and generate recommendations in a fraction of the time traditional consulting projects often require.
How AI Consulting Is Taking On Traditional Consulting Work
The attraction is not difficult to understand. Businesses have always looked for ways to move faster while controlling costs, and AI offers both.
Tasks such as market research, competitive analysis, policy drafting, and scenario modelling are increasingly being handled by AI-powered systems. What once required teams of analysts and weeks of preparation can now be completed in hours.
This does not mean AI is replicating the consulting process exactly. Instead, it is compressing many of the activities that sit at the foundation of consulting work.
Information that once moved through layers of research, presentations, and review cycles can now be processed almost instantly. The result is a different relationship between businesses and expertise, where access becomes quicker, cheaper, and increasingly available on demand.
The shift O’Leary describes is therefore less about technology and more about behaviour. Companies are beginning with AI and turning to consultants only when additional expertise becomes necessary.
Consulting Firms Are Adapting
The consulting industry is confronting the same reality as its clients.
Major advisory firms are increasingly focusing on AI-related work, helping organizations implement automation, redesign workflows, and develop governance frameworks around emerging technologies. In many ways, consultants are becoming guides to the very transformation reshaping their own profession.
This creates an interesting dynamic.
Consulting firms now find themselves both competing with AI and helping businesses adopt it. Like previous waves of technological change, the industry is adapting rather than resisting, searching for new areas where human expertise remains indispensable.
The transition reflects a broader pattern visible across business. New technologies rarely eliminate entire professions overnight. Instead, they change which skills become valuable and where those skills are applied.
Beyond Data and Recommendations
The most interesting transformation may not be occurring in research or analysis. It may be occurring in how businesses define expertise itself.
A recommendation can be generated quickly. Implementing that recommendation often requires something more complicated.
Leadership alignment, organisational change, stakeholder management, and execution remain deeply human challenges. They depend on trust, communication, and judgement in ways that software cannot easily replicate.
As routine analytical work becomes increasingly automated, consultants are being pushed toward these higher-value responsibilities. The profession is shifting from producing information to helping organisations act on it.
This is why the conversation is not simply about replacement.
Instead, it is about redistribution. AI is taking on some of the tasks that once formed the backbone of consulting engagements, while human advisors focus on areas where context and experience matter most.
What AI Consulting Means for the Future of Expertise
O’Leary’s comments capture a moment of transition that extends beyond consulting. Businesses are rethinking how they access knowledge, where they invest resources, and what they expect from external expertise.
Something is changing in the relationship between organisations and information. AI is making expertise more accessible, more immediate, and more deeply embedded within everyday operations.
For consulting firms, the challenge is not whether AI will become part of the profession; it already has. The challenge is identifying where human insight creates value once information itself is no longer difficult to obtain. That answer may define consulting’s next chapter.
