AI made it cheap to build. It didn't make it cheap to be wrong.
Magnitude North is a senior AI advisory firm working with companies in Canada and the US. We measure what your AI costs and what it returns. We make those numbers defensible to your board, your auditors, and your regulator. Then we name the one thing to fix first.
- Measured. A real number on what AI costs and returns. One your CFO can sign off on.
- Defensible. Governance that satisfies the people who can say no: boards, regulators, insurers, and procurement teams.
- Yours. The principals do the work, and you keep everything we build.
01 · Why you're stuck
Why you're stuck
Most companies adopted AI without outside help. Now they're finding out what that costs.
You can't prove it's working.
Only 16% of Canadian AI adopters used outside expertise. Over 80% of AI projects fail, twice the rate of ordinary IT projects. The top cause isn't technical. 84% of failures trace back to leadership and problem definition.
Sources: Statistics Canada · RAND
Nobody can say what it costs.
98% of organisations now actively manage AI spend, up from 31% in 2024. The FinOps Foundation sums it up: “Is your AI providing value? No one can answer that question yet.”
Sources: FinOps Foundation · Deloitte CFO Signals
Your employees are ahead of your policies.
36% of Canadian workers used generative AI at work last year, against 19% of businesses formally adopting it. The gap between those two numbers is shadow AI, measured.
Source: Statistics Canada
The deadlines now have dates.
OSFI E-23 binds every federally regulated Canadian financial institution on May 1, 2027. US AI-in-hiring laws in Texas and Illinois have been live since January 2026. The EU AI Act's enforcement wave began August 2026 and reaches any firm whose output is used in the EU.
Sources: OSFI · state statutes · European Commission
All four are the same problem: activity without measurement, and adoption without governance. Someone has to close the gap between what leadership believes and what the data shows. That is easier for an outsider to say, and it is the job.
02 · How we help
Four ways in
Every engagement starts with a fixed-price diagnostic: the number, the gap, the one thing to fix first. The readout is yours whether we implement it or not.
AI Value & Cost Audit
For leadership teams that can't answer “what is AI returning?” We inventory your spend, instrument usage, and deliver a number your CFO can sign: what it costs, what it returns, what to cut, what to scale. Fixed price, three to four weeks.
Model Governance & Compliance Readiness
OSFI E-23 model inventories and risk frameworks for federally regulated financial institutions. AI-in-hiring compliance for US employers. ISO/IEC 42001 readiness for firms whose enterprise customers are starting to ask for it in procurement.
Data & Foundations Readiness
Roughly 80% of enterprises say data constraints are what hold AI back. The returns live in the foundation, not the model. You get a diagnostic and a roadmap that converts straight into implementation.
Sources: Cloudera · Statistics Canada
AI Engineering Effectiveness
You rolled out AI coding tools. Did it work? 84% of developers use them, and 29% trust them. We instrument the rollout, measure honestly, and fix the standards, review practices, and reporting. We ship software with these tools ourselves.
Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026
What we don't do: sell bodies, build chatbots, or say yes to all seven of your agent ideas. Part of the job is scoping the one workflow that is ready, and saying no to the other six.
03 · Why us
Not the Big 4. Not the marketplace.
The principals do the work.
No leverage pyramid, no juniors learning on your invoice, no unreviewed AI output shipped under our name. Two senior practitioners with decades of shipped software between them, and both are in every engagement.
We're not selling build hours.
AI collapsed the price of execution, and we would rather tell you so. What stays valuable is judgment, measurement, and accountability. Those are the things you can take to a board.
You keep everything we build.
Frameworks, inventories, dashboards, prompts, training material. No proprietary lock-in, no retainer hostage-taking. If the readout says you don't need us, it says so.
04 · Fit
A good fit if
- You want the principals, not a bench. The two of us do the work, so you get senior judgment directly. We take a small number of engagements at a time. If you need a team on site, we'll say so.
- You're already using AI. Our clients aren't asking “should we?” They're asking “is it working, and can we defend it?”
- You're in Canada or the US. We're Canadian and fluent in OSFI, Quebec Law 25, and data-residency rules. Half our work is in the US.
05 · The principals
Who you're hiring
Matt Inglot
Principal, AccountabilityMatt founded Tilted Pixel and has spent twenty years delivering client systems and running lean, senior-only engagements. At Magnitude North he leads the accountability side of the practice: strategy, governance, and delivery.
Jason Hanley
Principal, MeasurementJason has run Syllogistic Software for over two decades, building and maintaining production systems for businesses that depend on them daily. At Magnitude North he leads the measurement side of the practice: engineering effectiveness and cost instrumentation.
AI should make your judgment more valuable, not less exercised. We automate the work, never the accountability.
Ready to know where you actually stand?
Book a free 30-minute call. We'll look at what you're running and name the most valuable first move. You'll leave with next steps you can use whether we work together or not.
Book a 30-minute call Free. No deck, no pitch, just a working conversation.