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KPMG answers rivals' multi-billion AI plans with a reporting line
The new Client Technology & Innovation group puts AI, innovation and the firm's Anthropic and OpenAI alliances under one vice chair reporting to CEO Tim Walsh, eight days before the previous AI vice chair retires.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- KPMG LLP has merged its AI, innovation and ecosystem functions into a Client Technology & Innovation group, effective Sept. 22, led by 15-year veteran Todd Lohr as a vice chair reporting straight to the CEO.
- The group has four pillars: client products and platforms, commercial infrastructure and deal structures, firmwide AI and data strategy, and an internal venture studio.
- KPMG's alliances with Anthropic, Google Cloud, Microsoft, OpenAI and Databricks all roll into the new group's ecosystem mandate, and Lohr helped architect the Anthropic tie-up.
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Why it matters
- constraint Two of the three exit routes put outside investors or a technology partner in the funding path, so how far the studio scales depends on prices KPMG does not set.
- exposure The US firm is elevating AI leadership while KPMG's UK advisory arm cuts data, technology, AI and cyber roles. A venture studio recruits from that same labour pool.
- precedent If centralisation ships product faster than the distributed approach Cryptobriefing attributes to the other three, rivals have to defend spreading AI across practice areas.
Changing a reporting line costs nothing. Deloitte, PwC and EY have each announced multi-billion-dollar AI investment plans over the past two years, according to Cryptobriefing [13]. What KPMG has announced is an org chart effective Sept. 22 [1].
Lohr managed technology alliances exceeding $2 billion in partner revenue before this, according to Cryptobriefing [12], and he told Fortune he hopes a billion-dollar company comes out of the incubator [9]. That target is about half the alliance revenue he was already accountable for [17].
He has wanted the structure for years. Lohr told Fortune he had been "pushing for something like this for several years," specifically a structure with "a singular leader that reports directly to the CEO, which I do, because that is how we're going to drive the transformative change that is required at KPMG" [4]. On the design, he said: "I'm taking my design cues from Silicon Valley incubators" [10].
The function being consolidated already exists. Steve Chase built KPMG's AI and Digital Innovation group starting in 2023 and moved into a KPMG International mandate as Global Head of AI in August 2025 [6]; he retires on Sept. 30 [5], eight days after CT&I takes effect [18]. Lohr holds vice chair rank, as Chase did [2]. The differences are the line to CEO Tim Walsh [3] and a scope that now takes in ecosystem partnerships and innovation [1].
The most interesting term is the exit menu. Each edge company is chartered to build and scale with multiple exit paths: folded back into KPMG's core, spun out with outside capital, or run as a standalone joint venture with a technology partner [8]. In a partnership, that matters. A studio whose portfolio is explicitly aimed at disrupting KPMG's own core service lines [16] is a claim on distributable profit, and two of those three routes let someone else fund it. Neither account gives a budget for CT&I or says how partner capital would be treated in a spin-out [20].
It depends which constraint was actually binding. If the constraint was decision speed, the commercial-infrastructure pillar moves first, in deal structures on "in very different commercial terms than what we have historically done" [15]. Pricing is the one thing an AI team inside an audit or tax practice cannot authorise on its own. If the constraint was capital, the edge companies get funded like internal R&D. The studio becomes a sales asset for the Anthropic, Google Cloud, Microsoft, OpenAI and Databricks relationships now sitting in the ecosystem mandate [11]. The third possibility is people: KPMG's UK operations recently cut advisory roles in data, technology, AI and cybersecurity, per Cryptobriefing [14]. A venture studio hires that skill set.
In my view the commercial-infrastructure pillar [7] is the strongest evidence for the thesis, because new deal terms cannot be signed off inside a practice line. The test arrives at the exits. If in twelve months every edge company has been folded back into the core, then no outside investor ever priced one.
What to watch
- Who picks up Chase's KPMG International Global Head of AI mandate after Sept. 30, and whether that global role also reports to a chief executive.
- Whether KPMG discloses a capital commitment for CT&I, as Deloitte, PwC and EY did for their AI programmes.
- Whether the Anthropic alliance acquires exclusivity or product terms once it sits inside CT&I's ecosystem mandate.