An AI engineering team reviewing a model evaluation dashboard
 
AI Development Company

Build the AI system your business actually runs.

Most AI projects end as a demo: a notebook, a chatbot, a pilot that never gets permission to touch real data. We build the other kind - agents, generative AI applications and models that work inside your operations, with evaluations, permissions and an audit trail.

20 years of software delivery, 1,500+ businesses, 70+ brands. Model-neutral by design, fixed scope on discovery, and honest about the work AI should not do.

A pilot is typically live in 4 to 6 weeks. Production usually follows in the same quarter.

The basics

What an AI development company actually does

An AI development company designs, builds and runs AI systems inside your business. That includes the unglamorous parts: finding the data, defining what a correct answer looks like, connecting the model to your systems, controlling what it is allowed to do, and watching it after launch. The model is one component. The delivery around it is the product.

What buyers often expect
  • A chatbot bolted onto the website
  • A model you fine-tune once and forget
  • A pilot that proves the idea works
  • An API wrapped in a new interface
  • A research project with no owner after launch
→
What production actually requires
  • A process and data audit before code
  • An evaluation set that defines correct
  • Integration with your systems and permissions
  • Monitoring for drift, quality and cost
  • A product your team can operate and change

This is why a two-week prototype can look impressive and still fail in month two. The demo answers whether the model can do something. Production answers whether the business can trust it, afford it, and keep it working. If a vendor cannot explain how correctness will be measured before the build starts, the project is a research bet, not a delivery plan. Our AI readiness assessment exists to surface that before anyone signs a build contract.

What we build

Eight kinds of AI system, one delivery standard

Every engagement below ships with an evaluation set, a permission model and an owner after launch. The first release is deliberately narrow: one workflow, measured, in production.

AI agents and agentic workflows

Agents that read from your systems, decide within rules, and act with approval. Support triage, finance follow-up, onboarding, research and reporting. More on AI agents for business.

Generative AI applications

Products and internal tools built on large language models: drafting, summarisation, extraction, search and analysis, with the guardrails that make the output usable.

RAG and knowledge systems

Your documents, policies, tickets and contracts turned into a grounded answer system with citations, access control and a measurable retrieval quality target.

Machine learning and prediction

Churn, demand, pricing, risk, fraud and forecasting models trained on your data, evaluated against a baseline, and deployed with drift monitoring.

Computer vision

Document and invoice extraction, quality inspection, shelf and inventory recognition, site and safety checks, and image search.

Voice and conversational AI

Voice agents and assistants for inbound calls, booking, qualification and support, with transcription, turn-taking, escalation and a clean handover to a person.

AI inside existing products

Add AI to software you already run: summarise in the CRM, classify in the helpdesk, extract in the ERP, without replacing the system your team knows.

AI-native products and MVPs

A new product where AI is the core, not a feature. Scoped as a testable MVP with a real user, a real workflow and a defined measure of success before a full build.

Where we work

Sector context beats a generic demo

An AI system is only as good as its understanding of the work around it. These are the sectors where we already know the data, the regulations and the failure modes.

Financial services

KYC review, document extraction, dispute triage, credit memos and fraud signals, built with the audit trail a regulated process needs. Fintech development.

Healthcare

Patient intake, clinical documentation support, coding and claims checks, and scheduling, with PHI handling and human sign-off. Healthcare software.

Real estate and proptech

Lease abstraction, listing enrichment, tenant triage, valuation support and portfolio reporting. Real estate software.

Hospitality and travel

Guest messaging, rate and availability agents, review response, itinerary support and OTA operations. Hotel software.

Logistics and supply chain

Document processing, exception triage, ETA prediction, carrier matching and customs paperwork. Logistics software.

Ecommerce and retail

Catalogue enrichment, product Q and A, returns triage, demand forecasting and merchandising support. Ecommerce software.

Education

Admissions triage, learning content support, assessment feedback and student services, as delivered for GEMS Education.

SaaS and technology

AI features inside your own product: summarisation, search, agents, extraction and evaluation, delivered with your team. Custom development.

How we deliver

From audit to production, with an exit test at every stage

A pilot that cannot fail is a demo. Each stage has a written exit test, and a failed test ends or reshapes the project before the next invoice.

1

AI audit and opportunity map

One to two weeks. We inspect the process, the data and the systems, then rank use cases by value, feasibility and risk. Deliverable: a shortlist with effort, cost band and a go or no-go recommendation.

2

Data readiness

One to three weeks. We profile the data, fix access, define ownership, and decide what can be used and what must be excluded. If the data cannot support the use case, we say so here rather than after the build.

3

Evaluation set

One to two weeks. We build the test set before the model: real inputs, expected outputs, edge cases and the failure that matters most. This becomes the acceptance test for everything that follows.

4

Pilot

Four to six weeks. One workflow, real users, real data, limited permissions. Success is measured against the evaluation set and a business metric, not a feeling in a demo.

5

Production build

Four to eight weeks after a passing pilot. Integration, permissions, approvals, audit logging, fallbacks, cost controls and operational runbooks.

6

Monitor and improve

Ongoing. Quality sampling, drift and cost monitoring, model and prompt updates, and a monthly review of what the system got wrong and what changed.

The numbers

What AI development costs, before you ask

Published bands, not "contact us for pricing". The range is wide because the work is not one thing. These are the numbers we quote against, and what moves you up or down inside them.

EngagementTypical rangeTimeWhat is included
Discovery and AI audit$6,000 - $15,0001 - 2 weeksCredited against the build if you proceed
Pilot and proof of value$15,000 - $35,0004 - 6 weeksOne workflow, real data, evaluation set included
Single AI feature in production$60,000 - $180,0008 - 16 weeksIntegration, permissions, evals, monitoring
Agent platform, several workflows$150,000 - $500,0004 - 9 monthsMulti-agent, approvals, audit, connectors, support
Monitoring and improvement$2,000 - $8,000 / monthOngoingQuality sampling, drift, model updates, incidents

What moves the number. The count of systems to integrate, how clean and accessible the data is, the accuracy bar you need (a 95% extraction target and a 99.5% one are different projects), whether the work is regulated, and whether the model has to run in your own environment.

What we fix before we start. Discovery scope, pilot scope, and the acceptance criteria. Change the criteria mid-build and it becomes a new phase with a new price, which is fairer than a surprise at the end.

What stays visible. Model and infrastructure usage is a separate line, so you can see what the system costs to run as well as what it costs to build. A system that is cheap to build and expensive to run is not cheap.

Deliverables

What you actually receive

AI projects fail quietly when the output is a demo and a slide. These are the artefacts we commit to, written into the statement of work, not implied.

During the build
  • Opportunity map with cost bands and a go or no-go call
  • Data readiness report, including what must be excluded
  • Evaluation set and written acceptance criteria
  • Pilot running with real users on real data
  • Permission model, approval rules and escalation paths
  • Monitoring dashboard and an operational runbook
→
At handover
  • Source code, repositories and build pipeline
  • Prompts, model configuration and version history
  • The evaluation suite and the latest results
  • Integration and deployment documentation
  • Audit log access and retention settings
  • A named support contact and a severity path

No black-box handover. If you decided to run the system with your own team tomorrow, you would have everything needed to do it: the code, the prompts, the test set, the results, the documentation and the logs. That is also the test of whether a vendor built you a product or rented you an outcome.

Build or buy

Build, buy, hire, or hand it to an AI employee

Not every problem needs a custom build. The right answer depends on whether the work is a product, a process, or a role. Use this table before you use a proposal.

OptionBest whenTime to valueWhat you controlMain risk
Custom build with usThe workflow is core, the data is yours, no product fits8 - 20 weeksFull: code, prompts, data, infrastructureDelivery risk if scope stays vague
Buy an AI SaaS toolThe need is standard and a good product already existsDaysLimited: their roadmap, their pricingLock-in and per-seat cost as you grow
Hire in-houseYou have a platform team and permanent AI work3 - 6 months to hire and rampFullHiring time, single point of failure
AI employee on BrahmaThe work is a repeatable role, not a new productDays to 4 weeksYour workflows and data; we run the platformLess suited to novel model research

A repeatable role - inbound triage, finance follow-up, reporting, onboarding - is usually better as an AI employee than as a custom build, because the platform already exists. A new product, a proprietary model, or a workflow that is your competitive advantage is usually better as a custom build. If a SaaS tool fits, we will say so and point you at the category. The platform behind the AI employee option is Brahma, and the two can run together.

Honesty

When AI is the wrong answer

A good AI partner saves you from the wrong project as often as it wins the right one. These are the cases where we will tell you not to build.

01

The rule is undocumented judgement

If two experienced people disagree and cannot write the rule down, an agent will learn the disagreement. Fix the process first.

02

There is no data and none is coming

Synthetic data can prototype an interface. It cannot prove the system will work on your real inputs.

03

Volume is too low

If the task runs twice a month, the build will never pay back. Buy a tool or leave it alone.

04

You need 100% correctness with no human check

Use deterministic software. A probabilistic system is the wrong instrument for an absolute rule.

05

Nobody will own it after launch

A model without an owner degrades quietly. If no one can review the failures monthly, do not deploy it.

06

The run costs more than the task

Automating a two-dollar task with a five-dollar inference bill is a hobby. We price the run before we build.

Engineering

The stack, and why we are not married to one model

Model choice is a procurement decision, not a religion. We route each task to the model that meets the quality bar at the lowest cost, and we design so the model can be replaced without rebuilding the product.

01

Models and routing

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Qwen, DeepSeek and Mistral, hosted or open-weight, chosen per task. A routing layer lets us switch provider or fall back when quality, price or availability changes.

02

Orchestration

Agent frameworks, tool calling, queues, retries, state and human checkpoints. The orchestration is where reliability lives, not in the prompt.

03

Retrieval and data

Postgres with pgvector, Qdrant, OpenSearch, Snowflake or BigQuery, with chunking, metadata filters and permissions-aware retrieval so the model only sees what the user is allowed to see.

04

Evaluation

Golden sets, LLM-as-judge with human review, regression tests in CI, and red teaming against the failures that matter: wrong extraction, invented policy, missed escalation.

05

Guardrails and observability

Input and output filters, PII redaction, token and cost limits, traces, audit logs and alerts on quality or spend. Every run is inspectable.

06

Deployment

Cloud, private VPC, on-premises or hybrid. Containers, infrastructure as code, secret management, backups and a rollback path that has been tested.

Trust

Security, data and governance, from day one

An AI system with access to your systems needs a stronger baseline than a website. These are the controls we design into every build, not an enterprise add-on.

DPA as standardPII redactionRole-based accessHuman approvalFull audit logEU AI Act mappingNIST AI RMFNo training on your dataRegion choiceIP transfer

The rule is simple: the model gets the minimum access the task needs, irreversible actions wait for a person, and every decision is logged.

Data minimisation and residency

We use the data the task needs, redact what it does not, and can keep processing in a region you choose, including your own environment.

Access control and approvals

Per-tool scopes, role-based access for your team, and approval gates on anything that leaves the business or changes a record.

Evaluation and red teaming

Correctness is tested before launch and re-tested after every model or prompt change. Known failure modes are documented, not discovered in production.

Model and vendor neutrality

No lock-in to a single provider. If a model is deprecated, too expensive, or outgrown, we switch it behind the interface.

IP and code ownership

You own the code, the prompts, the data and the model artefacts we build for you. Full transfer on delivery, with the documentation to run it.

Incident response

A named contact, a severity path, and a written process for model failure, data exposure or cost runaway. Tested before go-live.

Who you work with

A small pod, named before the contract

No bait-and-switch team. The people in the proposal are the people on the build, and you meet the AI lead in the first call.

AI lead

Owns the use case, the evaluation set and the technical decisions. One accountable person from audit to production.

ML engineer

Model selection, fine-tuning, retrieval, evaluation and the pipeline that keeps quality measurable.

Data engineer

Access, pipelines, quality, lineage and the permissions that decide what the model can see.

Full-stack engineer

The product around the model: interface, integrations, approvals, audit and the operational tooling.

QA and evaluation

Builds the test set, runs regression and red-team passes, and signs off the release against the acceptance criteria.

Product and delivery

Scope, plan, risks, stakeholder communication and the monthly review of what the system got wrong.

Due diligence

Twelve questions that separate an AI vendor from an AI partner

Ask these before you sign. The answers matter more than the deck, and a good vendor will welcome most of them.

Ask every vendor

  1. 01Can you show a system running in production, with a named client I can speak to?
  2. 02How will you measure correctness, and who writes the test set?
  3. 03What happens when the model is wrong, and how quickly would we know?
  4. 04Who owns the data, the prompts, the code and the model artefacts?
  5. 05Which models are you using, and can we switch without a rebuild?
  6. 06How do you handle PII, retention and data residency?
  7. 07What is the integration plan for our CRM, ERP and data warehouse?
  8. 08What does the first 30 days look like, in writing?
  9. 09Who is on the team, by name and role, and how much of their time do we get?
  10. 10What is fixed price, what is variable, and what triggers a change order?
  11. 11How do you monitor drift, quality and cost after launch?
  12. 12What will you refuse to build, and why?

Red flags

  • A guaranteed accuracy number before seeing the data
  • No evaluation plan, only a demo
  • A portfolio of prototypes with no production references
  • No data audit before the proposal
  • Vague or missing IP and confidentiality terms
  • No monitoring, support or ownership plan after launch
  • No named engineers, only a sales team and a deck

The most common failure is not a weak model. It is a project with no definition of correct, no data owner and no plan for the day after launch.

Planning

Typical timelines and ranges by project type

Use these to sanity-check a proposal. If a quote is far below the range, something is missing from the scope; if it is far above, ask what is being built that you did not ask for.

Project typeFirst releaseTypical rangeGood fit for
RAG knowledge assistant6 - 12 weeks$40,000 - $120,000Document-heavy support, policy, legal or operations search
Single AI feature in an existing product8 - 16 weeks$60,000 - $180,000Extraction, classification, drafting or summarisation inside your app
Agent workflow with approvals10 - 20 weeks$90,000 - $250,000Multi-step work across two or more systems, with a human gate
Voice agent6 - 12 weeks$50,000 - $150,000Inbound calls, booking, qualification, escalation
Computer vision inspection10 - 20 weeks$70,000 - $200,000Documents, quality control, shelf or site checks
AI-native MVP6 - 10 weeks$35,000 - $90,000A new product with AI at the core, scoped to a testable release
Agent platform, several workflows4 - 9 months$150,000 - $500,000Multiple agents, shared memory, audit, connectors and support
FAQ

AI development questions, answered straight

What does an AI development company do?

It designs, builds and runs AI systems inside a business. That covers the use case and data audit, the evaluation set that defines correct output, the model and retrieval layer, integration with your systems, permissions and approvals, and monitoring after launch. The model is one part of the delivery, not the whole job.

How much does AI development cost?

A discovery and audit is typically $6,000 to $15,000. A pilot is $15,000 to $35,000. A single AI feature in production usually lands between $60,000 and $180,000, and a multi-workflow agent platform between $150,000 and $500,000. The range is driven by integrations, data quality, the accuracy bar and regulation, not by the model licence.

How long does an AI project take?

A pilot is normally live in 4 to 6 weeks. A production feature takes 8 to 16 weeks after that, depending on integration and approvals. A multi-workflow platform takes 4 to 9 months. We do not promise a two-week production system; what can be done in two weeks is a prototype.

Can you build with our data?

Yes, under a data processing agreement, with the access controls and residency you need. We use only the data the task requires, redact what it does not, and your data is not used to train models. If the data cannot support the use case, the audit will say so before a build starts.

Do you fine-tune models or use retrieval?

Usually both, in the right order. Most business use cases start with prompting and retrieval over your own content, because it is faster and easier to correct. Fine-tuning is added when the evaluation set shows a real gain in format, tone, domain vocabulary, latency or cost. The decision is made on measured results, not preference.

Who owns the code, prompts and models?

You own the application code, the prompts, the data and the model artefacts we build for you, with full transfer on delivery. Third-party foundation models remain under their own licences, which we document. There is no lock-in clause and no hostage code.

What accuracy can you guarantee?

No honest vendor can guarantee a percentage before seeing your data. What we do guarantee is the process: an agreed metric, a test set built from your real inputs, measured results before launch, documented failure modes, and a fix path. If the measured result does not clear the bar, the pilot does not go to production.

Do you work with open-source models?

Yes. Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, Mistral and other open-weight models are part of the standard menu, including on-premises deployment when data cannot leave your environment. We compare them against hosted models on your evaluation set, including cost per task.

How do you stop hallucinations?

Ground the model in retrieved sources, require citations, constrain output with structured schemas, validate against rules, and route uncertain or high-impact answers to a person. Then measure it: hallucination is a quality metric with a test set, not a promise.

Can you take over a stalled AI pilot?

Yes. We start with a short audit: what was built, what the data supports, what is missing, and whether to finish it or rebuild. Sometimes the right answer is to stop. The audit is fixed price and you keep the findings either way.

Do you offer staff augmentation?

Yes. Our engineers can embed in your team on a monthly basis, with the same vetting and the same delivery standards. It suits teams that have a platform and need AI capacity, rather than a full outsourced build.

Do you build in our environment?

Yes. We deploy to your cloud account, a private VPC, on-premises or a hybrid, depending on where the data is allowed to go. You can bring your own model keys or use ours, and the deployment is documented so your team can operate it.

How is AI development different from normal software development?

The engineering discipline is the same, but three things change. The output is probabilistic, so correctness has to be measured rather than assumed. Data quality becomes a first-class dependency. And the system needs monitoring after launch because models, prompts and real-world inputs drift. Those three differences are why evaluation and observability are in every scope we write.

How do we start?

A 30-minute scoping call, then a fixed-price audit if the use case looks real. You leave the call with a view on feasibility, the data you will need, a cost band and the first release we would recommend. No obligation and no generic deck.

Client Testimonials

Travel and hospitality clients, in their own words

Real clients, real projects. Nadia Almedro, founder of the travel company Safari Finders, on working with us.

Nadia Almedro, Founder

Safari Finders

Dan Otieno, Founder

Client video testimonial

★★★★★

Building a website can be very tricky, and finding the correct person to do it is very complex. Working with the team has been amazing - they have been very helpful and they are always there to assist. I would definitely recommend NCrypted for your vacation rental solution.

Nadia Almedro - Founder, Safari Finders
★★★★★

NCrypted has helped our little nonprofit develop a powerful website, Treatment Scout, to help people find and review treatment clinics for mental health and addiction. I have been amazed by their ability to bring this complex and important project to life under our very lean budget.

Matt Kuntz - Executive Director, NAMI Montana, USA

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