McKinsey, BCG, and Deloitte's new competition is small, fast, and driven by AI

Lakshmi Varanasi,Kelsey Vlamis,Tim Paradis

Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 1:15 PM 10 min read

• Smaller, boutique consulting firms are leveraging AI to compete with established players.

• Many of these firms have a narrow focus, like helping clients 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.

But now, a new wave of upstarts fueled by AI is attempting to chip away at that dominance.

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 have helped them reduce old-school bureaucracy, offer more competitive rates, and make the human side of consulting work easier.

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

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 just launched, 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.

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