McKinsey says it needs to reinvent itself and that AI is the answer: 'It's going to be most of what we do in the future'

• Generative AI is a major focus at top consulting firms like McKinsey & Company.
• McKinsey's AI arm QuantumBlack employs 2,000 data scientists and has five global R&D centers.

Generative AI has become the leading conversation topic at the world's premiere consulting firms.

"It's become a huge part of what the firm does, and I actually think it's going to be most of what we do in the future," Ben Ellencweig, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, told Business Insider. "How do we actually inject gen AI and AI thinking into ways of doing business?"

Ellencweig leads alliances, acquisitions, and partnerships globally for McKinsey's AI arm, QuantumBlack, which launched in 2015. It now employs some 2,000 data scientists, accounting for over 4% of its 45,000 employees. It also has research and development centers in five locations worldwide — India, Brazil, the UK, the United States, and Israel.

The launch of ChatGPT marked an inflection point for McKinsey's work on generative AI. "Today, roughly, about 40% of the work we do is analytics-related, AI-related, and a lot of it is moving to Gen AI," Ellencweig said. He added that McKinsey has worked on roughly 400 generative AI projects in the last six months.

Despite a broader cooldown in the consulting industry, McKinsey pulled in a record $16 billion in revenue in 2023 thanks to the promise of generative AI. While clients last year were caught up in experimenting with the new technology, this year, they're focused on building a larger ecosystem for it to thrive. But the technology itself is just a fraction of that, Ellencweig said. "You need to think about the change management. You need to talk about safe AI and responsible AI. You need to think about, 'How do you change workflows in the business?'"

Last June, the firm also announced a partnership with AI startup Cohere, which focuses on building AI models for enterprises. And it's been a win for both. McKinsey's work helps the young startup "build trust" among more organizations, Cohere's founder and CEO Aidan Gomez told Business Insider. While McKinsey benefits from Cohere's commitment to innovation — and responsible development.

It's not clear how the world will change amid the rapid advances in AI. But the firm's thesis is that the technology will be ubiquitous. "Gen AI is going to become part of every product," Ellencweig said. "It's going to be injected in everything we do in life way beyond a smart bot that helps navigate a website or a product."