Do you work on pure equity?

I love working with ambitious founders, and I happily structure hybrid engagements — a reduced service fee combined with equity — when the fit is right. Pure-equity arrangements, however, aren't something I take on. A service fee is required on every project: it ensures focused delivery, protects both sides against misaligned timelines, and keeps the engagement sustainable the same way any senior technical hire is compensated. If you're an early-stage founder, let's talk — there's almost always a structure that works.

How much does a Fractional CTO cost in Europe?

Hourly consulting is €150/hour, day rate is €700/day. Ongoing Fractional CTO retainers start from about €2,100/month for a 2-3 days/month minimum and scale up with the cadence — a 1-day-a-week engagement typically lands between €5,000–€8,000 per month depending on scope. Partnership deals (reduced fee + equity) are available for aligned early-stage startups. All prices exclude VAT and French TVA applies where relevant; EU B2B clients with a valid intra-community VAT number benefit from reverse charge.

Fractional CTO vs full-time CTO — which should I hire?

Hire a full-time CTO when the role genuinely needs 40+ hours/week of executive tech leadership — usually post-Series A with 10+ engineers, a real product in market, and a 3-year roadmap. Hire a Fractional CTO when you need senior technical leadership but: you're pre-seed to Series A, your engineering team is under 10 people, you want to validate the product before committing to a cap-table-impacting hire, or you need a specific expertise (AI strategy, EU compliance, sovereign cloud) that a generalist full-time CTO wouldn't bring.

How does the Partnership model work?

It's a hybrid engagement: a reduced cash rate (typically 30-40% of my standard) combined with equity. The exact split is discussed case by case after we've talked through your stage, timeline, runway, and goals. The service-fee component is always present; it's what keeps the engagement focused and fair to both sides.

What's a typical engagement duration?

Consultations run 30 or 60 minutes. MVPs typically ship in 4-8 weeks. Fractional CTO engagements are usually 2-3 days per month minimum, with the cadence scaling up based on traction and fit. Shorter sprint engagements (1-2 weeks) are also possible for well-scoped prototypes.

Can you help with EU AI Act compliance?

Yes. I help companies classify their AI systems by risk tier (prohibited / high-risk / limited-risk / minimal-risk), implement the technical documentation and post-market monitoring required by Articles 9-15, align with GPAI obligations for foundation-model users, and produce the DPIA, Transfer Impact Assessments (Schrems II), and Article 28 DPAs needed. I also cross-walk with GDPR, NIS2, DORA (for financial services), and ISO/IEC 42001 / 23894. Sign-off always rests with your DPO or legal counsel; what I deliver is a defensible, documented compliance posture.

Can you help us migrate from OpenAI to sovereign infrastructure?

Yes — this is becoming a common request from European companies facing compliance pressure or customer procurement scrutiny. Typical path: audit current OpenAI/Anthropic usage, map workloads by quality/latency/cost sensitivity, select replacement targets (Mistral Large for most chat, self-hosted Llama-3 or Mixtral for sensitive data, Claude Sonnet via Bedrock EU where acceptable), build an eval harness that proves parity, migrate behind a feature flag, and cut over gradually. End state: zero prompt/response egress to non-EU jurisdictions, with an auditable trail.

Do you work with non-technical founders?

Yes — this is one of my most common engagements. Non-technical founders hire me to make the build vs buy decision, run the first hiring, set up the stack, ship the MVP, and represent the company technically with investors, partners, and early customers. I translate between product intent and engineering reality, and write everything in plain language so the founder stays in the loop without needing to code.

Do you work remote or on-site?

Remote-first, based in Paris. I'm open to on-site days in Paris and short on-site sprints across Europe for the right engagements. Most clients are 100% remote with weekly syncs and async daily updates.

How quickly can you start?

Usually within 1-2 weeks of signing. For urgent MVPs or discovery sprints I can often kick off within days, starting with a scoped 3-5 day discovery phase before we commit to the full build.

Yes. Mutual NDAs are standard. I can send you a clean one to start, or sign yours if the terms are reasonable. All client work, product ideas, and internal data stay strictly confidential — during and after the engagement.

Can you join as a technical co-founder?

Rarely, and only for startups I'm deeply aligned with — on mission, market, and long-term collaboration. Equity-heavy co-founder arrangements need mutual conviction on both sides and a realistic path to milestones. More often than not, the Partnership model (reduced service fee + equity) is a better fit for both of us: it gets you senior technical leadership without the co-founder commitment, and it keeps my focus across a handful of great projects rather than locked into one.

Can you work with US or Canadian clients?

Yes — North American clients are a regular part of the practice. Time-zone overlap with the US East Coast is 3-4 synchronous hours daily (your morning, my afternoon), and engagements typically run async-friendly with weekly syncs.

Fractional CTO vs freelance AI developer: which do you need?

Founders searching for technical help often conflate two roles: the Fractional CTO who sets strategy, leads the team, and owns the technical roadmap, and the freelance AI developer who builds and integrates LLM systems hands-on. Job posts blur the titles; agencies sell "AI CTO" packages that are really implementation sprints. The confusion is expensive — you either pay executive rates for coding work, or hire a builder when you need someone in the board meeting.

This post draws a clean line between the two, explains when each fits, and describes the combination that works for most seed-stage AI products.

Fractional CTO — what you are buying

A Fractional CTO is senior technical leadership on a part-time cadence — typically 2-3 days per month, sometimes more during a fundraise or platform migration. The accountability is outcomes: roadmap, architecture decisions, hiring, vendor selection, investor due diligence, and engineering culture. For a full definition, see What is a Fractional CTO.

Typical deliverables:

Technical roadmap aligned with funding milestones
Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for stack, cloud, and AI platform choices
Engineering hiring: job specs, interview loops, first 2-3 hires
Code review and technical due diligence for investors or acquirers
AI strategy: build vs buy, model selection, compliance posture
Representation to customers, partners, and boards on technical matters

A Fractional CTO may write code occasionally — a spike, a critical path, a review — but coding is not the primary output. If your job post says "Fractional CTO who will also build the entire product solo", you are describing two jobs.

Freelance AI developer — what you are buying

A freelance AI developer is a hands-on engineer focused on shipping AI features: LLM integration, RAG pipelines, agents, evals, deployment, and MLOps. The accountability is deliverables in your repository — production URLs, test harnesses, runbooks — not executive leadership.

Typical deliverables:

Working RAG or agent feature in staging and production
Eval suite with measurable quality metrics
CI/CD and monitoring for inference cost and latency
Documentation for your team to maintain and extend the system
Integration with your existing auth, billing, and frontend stack

They may advise on model choice, but they do not typically run your hiring process, join your board prep, or own the 12-month technical roadmap. For hiring guidance specific to this role, see How to hire a freelance AI developer in Europe.

Side-by-side comparison

Primary output: Fractional CTO → decisions and leadership; AI developer → code and systems
Cadence: Fractional CTO → ongoing, 2-3 days/month minimum; AI developer → project or sprint-based
Typical rate: Fractional CTO → €800–€1,200/day or monthly retainer; AI developer → €600–€900/day or fixed-scope project
Best stage: Fractional CTO → pre-seed to Series B needing senior judgment; AI developer → any stage with a defined build
Investor-facing: Fractional CTO → yes; AI developer → rarely
Code ownership: Fractional CTO → advisory; AI developer → primary author

Decision matrix

Hire a Fractional CTO when

You are a non-technical founder and need someone to translate product vision into a credible technical plan
You are preparing for a fundraise and need architecture diagrams, team plan, and due-diligence readiness
You have engineers but no senior leader — the team needs direction, not more hands
You are navigating EU AI Act or GDPR compliance at the architecture level
You need to hire your first 2-3 engineers and do not know what "good" looks like

Timing guidance: When to hire a Fractional CTO and How to hire a Fractional CTO.

Hire a freelance AI developer when

You have a defined AI feature or MVP to ship in 4-16 weeks
You already have technical leadership (founder-engineer, VP Eng, or Fractional CTO) and need execution capacity
You need RAG, agents, or LLM integration built to production standard
Your prototype works in a notebook and needs hardening for real users
You are migrating from a US-hosted API to EU sovereign infrastructure

Hire both when

The combination works well for seed-stage AI startups:

Fractional CTO sets architecture, model strategy, compliance posture, and hiring plan
Freelance AI developer executes the first production feature on that architecture
Fractional CTO reviews code, owns roadmap, and prepares the handoff to a full-time hire

The failure mode is hiring only a developer when you lack strategy — you get a feature, not a platform — or only a Fractional CTO when you need shipping velocity — you get slides, not software.

When neither is right

Sometimes the honest answer is a different shape entirely:

Full-time CTO — post-Series B, 15+ engineers, daily executive presence required. See Fractional vs part-time vs interim vs full-time CTO.
Technical advisor (0.5 day/month) — you have a strong eng lead and only need occasional sanity checks
Agency fixed-price build — you do not need to own the codebase long-term (rare for startups, common for corporate innovation labs)
No hire yet — the hypothesis is not validated; a no-code or manual concierge MVP may be cheaper learning. See Why you should not hire a Fractional CTO for the contrarian case.

How to structure a combined engagement

Week 1: Fractional CTO runs discovery — stack audit, compliance classification, roadmap draft
Week 2: Architecture ADRs signed off; AI developer begins spike on highest-risk component
Weeks 3-8: AI developer builds; Fractional CTO reviews weekly, unblocks vendor/compliance decisions
Week 8+: Handover documentation; Fractional CTO supports hiring plan for full-time engineer if traction warrants

Keep the contracts separate. One scope for leadership, one scope for implementation. Combined "CTO who builds everything" contracts blur accountability and make disputes harder to resolve.

Bottom line

Fractional CTO and freelance AI developer are complementary roles, not substitutes. Strategy without execution stalls; execution without strategy ships the wrong thing. Match the hire to the gap — leadership, building, or both — and structure the engagement so each role has clear deliverables. Fractional CTO and AI Developer pages describe how Insightrix structures each; submit a brief if you want a recommendation for your stage.

Editorial content. Informational only — not legal, financial, or professional advice.

Fractional CTO vs freelance AI developer: which do you need?

Fractional CTO — what you are buying

Freelance AI developer — what you are buying

Side-by-side comparison

Decision matrix

Hire a Fractional CTO when

Hire a freelance AI developer when

Hire both when

When neither is right

How to structure a combined engagement

Bottom line

Get the playbook

Want a similar conversation about your stack?

More reading

Fractional vs Part-time vs Interim vs Full-time CTO — what is the difference?

What is a Fractional CTO and when do you need one?

How to hire a freelance AI developer in Europe