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KPMG LLP is folding its AI, innovation and ecosystem functions into a single new unit designed to spin up AI-native businesses at start-up speed, installing a vice chair who reports directly to the firm\u2019s chief executive to run it \u2014 a structural bet that the biggest disruption to the professional-services model in a century can\u2019t be managed through the usual committee layers.<\/p>\n
The U.S. audit, tax and advisory firm\u2019s new\u00a0Client Technology & Innovation (CT&I)\u00a0group, to he announced Sept. 22 and effective Oct. 1, will be led by Todd Lohr, a 15-year KPMG veteran who told Fortune<\/em> that he had been \u201cpushing for something like this for several years\u201d \u2014 specifically, a structure with \u201ca singular leader that reports directly to the CEO, which I do, because that is how we\u2019re going to drive the transformative change that is required at KPMG.\u201d<\/p>\n CT&I\u2019s launch coincides with the departure of Steve Chase, vice chair and global head of AI & Digital Innovation, who is set to retire from the firm on Sept. 30. Chase built KPMG\u2019s original AI and Digital Innovation group starting in 2023 and has more recently held a KPMG International mandate as Global Head of AI, a role he moved into in August 2025. <\/p>\n That reporting line elevates AI and innovation strategy out of the layer of vice chairs and functional heads and puts it in the same room as CEO Tim Walsh\u2019s own agenda, signaling that KPMG views this less as a technology upgrade than a net new group focused on building what the firm will sell in the future<\/p>\n \u201cThere are things in the future that are, you know, a little existential for any organization, including our own,\u201d Lohr said, \u201cbut I certainly think that we are sitting at this kind of pivotal moment in history, where we\u2019re going to be able to take advantage of some of these swings in the market, and be able to look very differently at the future of KPMG, which is super exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n Lohr, 49, is not an outside hire brought in to inject Silicon Valley DNA. An internal operator who has spent years building the exact relationships CT&I is designed to commercialize, he helped start the firm\u2019s early data and AI practices, ran its U.S. technology business including cyber, then moved into a role overseeing third-party technology partnerships before a stint leading the firm\u2019s clients-and-markets commercial organization. <\/p>\n Lohr was one of the leaders involved with architecting KPMG\u2019s alliance with Anthropic. Along with the Anthropic tie-up, existing relationships with Google Cloud, Microsoft, OpenAI and Databricks all now roll into CT&I\u2019s ecosystem mandate.<\/p>\n His path to KPMG is a bit unusual for Big Four leadership. Before joining the firm, Lohr was employee No. 3 at Confiance, a financial-services consulting start-up he co-founded in 2008 \u2014 \u201cnot the best year to do a start-up,\u201d he said \u2014 and worked as a business architect at Zurich Insurance. That start-up scar tissue, he suggested, is precisely what qualifies him to run what he described as an internal venture studio: \u201cI\u2019m taking my design cues from Silicon Valley incubators.\u201d<\/p>\n Lohr\u2019s new organization has four pillars that go well beyond a typical \u201cAI office\u201d:<\/p>\n Each \u201cedge company\u201d carries a mandate to build and scale with multiple exit paths \u2014 including being folded back into KPMG\u2019s core business, spun out with outside capital, or run as a standalone joint venture with a technology partner.<\/p>\n Colleagues have floated even bigger stakes. Lohr called the group an incubator modeled on Silicon Valley design and said he hopes a billion-dollar company comes to fruition as a result. \u201cI think KPMG and professional services in general have some of the greatest \u2014 we are a talent factory for most of the world on a lot of business skills,\u201d Lohr said. \u201cWe have a lot of ideas. What we have not done is \u2026 bring those ideas through commercial lens \u2014 we are not as good at that, because we know how to do the model that we\u2019ve done for over a century.\u201d<\/p>\n That talent question is also why Lohr said KPMG has spent the past several years deliberately educating its management committee and board on disruption, including regular management committee meetings held in Silicon Valley, where the leadership team participates in sessions with frontier AI labs. \u201cOur next one is in the next few weeks,\u201d Lohr said, \u201cand I\u2019m going to bring the entire management committee to one of the AI frontier companies\u2026 We\u2019re going to meet with their chief scientist, we\u2019re going to meet with their CISO.\u201d<\/p>\n Lohr said he\u2019s hoping to realize the \u201cgreat ideas that we have in the firm,\u201d but operating more \u201con the edge\u201d than the traditional approach of the Big Four consulting giant. He said he plans to rotate rising KPMG staff through \u201cedge companies\u201d as founders and operators, arguing the experience will make them \u201cbetter accountants\u201d and \u201cbetter consultants\u201d when they eventually return to core roles \u2014 mirroring, he said, the traditional Big Four model where talent cycles in and out of the firm but stays part of its alumni network.<\/p>\n In June 2026, AI-detection firm GPTZero found that a flagship KPMG International report, \u201cTotal Experience: Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI,\u201d cited case studies involving UBS, Swiss Federal Railways and the U.K.\u2019s National Health Service that simply did not exist \u2014 40 of the report\u2019s 45 citations were later found to be fabricated, and roughly half its factual claims were either false or misattributed.<\/p>\n Lohr revealed that KPMG has recently launched an AI tool called Hawk that looks at all of its content and assesses AI hallucinations, and it has launched for most KPMG content, sort of an in-house GPTZero. A KPMG spokesperson clarified that Hawk is mainly used by the marketing department to vet thought leadership pieces, whereas CT&I\u2019s remit goes beyond internal transformation and internal tooling and is much more focused on the future of how KPMG serves clients.<\/p>\n GPTZero founder Edward Tian, a Princeton researcher and former Bellingcat team member, has since documented the same pattern at every other member of the Big Four: EY, where 60% of the citations in a December 2025 cybersecurity report were found to be hallucinated; Deloitte Australia, where a University of Sydney academic flagged 19 hallucinations in a single report; and PwC, where GPTZero put the odds that one Middle East governance report was entirely AI-generated at 84%.<\/p>\n Lohr, in the interview, stressed that KPMG\u2019s AI acceptable use policy stretches back to his first work on the topic a decade ago. \u201cAt the end of the day,\u201d Lohr warned, \u201cit\u2019s your output. You need to own the work product.\u201d He said he wants the entire workforce to understand that \u201cAI is awesome, but it\u2019s also an awesome responsibility that everyone needs to own.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs one of the folks that really started our AI business here almost 10 years ago,\u201d he added, \u201cthe first offering was AI strategy, the second offering was trusted AI. That was something we\u2019ve been adamant [about]. It\u2019s part of our culture.\u201d <\/p>\n [This report has been updated to clarify that the new division will be announced Sept. 22 and effective Oct. 1.]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Exclusive #KPMG #reorgs #division #create #incubator #role #reporting #CEO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KPMG LLP is folding its AI, in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[283,1190,153,2460,2106,8159,3286,8158,2739,1621],"class_list":["post-5083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-ceo","tag-consulting","tag-create","tag-division","tag-exclusive","tag-incubator","tag-kpmg","tag-reorgs","tag-reporting","tag-role"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy now, and why Lohr<\/h2>\n
What CT&I Actually Does<\/h2>\n
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An awesome responsibility <\/h2>\n