Immersion
We get inside your industry and your organisation: where the value sits, where the friction is, and where frontier capability can change the game. Site visits, interviews, data access where useful.
How it works
A fixed retainer sets the cadence.
A fixed retainer sets the cadence.
Delivery scales when it's earned.
Labs engagements start simple and stay predictable: one monthly fee, one monthly report, recommendations as they surface, and a build team ready the moment something is worth building.
The four stages
From immersion to delivery
The report
An industry-specific frontier report every month — developments, competitive signals and concrete implications for you. Presented live to your leadership team if you want it.
Recommendations
Targeted product recommendations, each scoped, justified and designed to move your numbers. Often accompanied by a lab prototype so you're deciding on something you can see.
Delivery
Choose what to pursue and Labs delivers it: prototyped in our robotics lab where hardware is involved, engineered to production quality throughout, deployed on the Edge platform where scale is needed.
Commercials
Two lines on the invoice
A fixed retainer you can budget for, and delivery priced per piece of work. Nothing else.
Insight, every month
£[X],000 / month
Fixed. Twelve-month minimum, then rolling.
- Immersion in your organisation
- One industry-specific frontier report a month
- Ad hoc product recommendations as they surface
- Access to the lab and its team
- Quarterly session with your leadership team
Building, when you want it
Scoped per recommendation
Fixed price or time-and-materials, agreed up front.
- Prototype on lab hardware
- Pilot in your environment
- Production build and deployment
- Day-to-day engineering via Edge Expert Services
- Hosting on the Edge platform where needed
Why this model
Incentives that point the same way as yours
A retainer with delivery attached is unusual. Most advisers can't build, and most builders don't advise. We've set it up this way deliberately.
The retainer means we're paid to be right over time, not to be impressive once. A recommendation that doesn't pan out costs us credibility with a client we want to keep for years. So we only recommend what we've proven.
Delivery being optional means we have no incentive to invent work. Some months the right answer is "do nothing yet", and we'll say so. When there is something worth building, you already know the team, and the team already knows your business.
What you should expect from us
- A report on the same day every month, without chasing
- Recommendations with numbers attached, not adjectives
- "Not yet" when the technology isn't ready
- One accountable team from insight to production
- Everything we build, you own
Questions
Frequently asked
Is Labs a consultancy?
Not in the usual sense. Consultancies advise and leave. Labs advises, prototypes in its own lab, and delivers with the same team. We're judged on what ships.
Do we have to buy delivery?
No. The retainer stands on its own. Delivery is there when a recommendation is worth pursuing, priced separately and agreed up front.
How is this different from Edge Expert Services?
Expert Services provides senior engineering teams for day-to-day building and running of systems. Labs exists for the moves that change the game: finding them, proving them, and delivering them. They work well together, and Labs will often bring Expert Services in for the heavy lifting around a delivery.
Who owns what you build?
You do. Prototypes, code, models fine-tuned on your data — all yours. We retain our general know-how and anything that pre-dates the engagement.
Can we visit the lab?
Yes, and we'd encourage it. Most clients visit during immersion and again when a prototype is ready to see. [Location.]
What industries do you work in?
Anywhere AI has to touch the physical world. See Industries for where we've looked hardest so far.
Is our data safe?
Anything sensitive runs on the Edge platform, sovereign infrastructure under your control, or on hardware in the lab that never leaves it. We'll agree the boundaries in writing during immersion.
Start with the first report
Tell us about your organisation and we'll come back with how a Labs retainer would work for you — and what the first report would cover.