Management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. today announced an expanded artificial intelligence platform that offers enterprises a consolidated, software-based approach to building, implementing, scaling up and governing generative AI solutions.

The expanded platform is powered by Iguazio, an AI development startup acquired by McKinsey in January 2023. Since its acquisition, Iguazio’s services have been integrated into QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm. They offer a software-based platform grounded in data science principles to help organizations develop, deploy and manage generative AI solutions.

The expanded capabilities are aimed at addressing issues wherein countless pilot projects using AI have stalled for lack of structure and purpose and have failed to deliver desired results. Added to the mix is that some AI tools, such as chatbots and virtual agents, can be prone to delivering embarrassing and sometimes dangerous results.

The newly expanded implementation of Iguazio is focused on facilitating generative AI adoption through two core features — scaling and governance. Scaling in generative AI ops allows for the efficient and effective implementation of AI applications, while governance involves putting in place generative AI guardrails to mitigate risk by directing essential monitoring, data privacy and compliance activities.

“Gen AI made it easier to build proofs of concept, but much harder to move them to production, widening the gap between potential and actual business value,” said Asaf Somekh, co-founder and chief executive officer of Iguazio. “With the Iguazio platform, we bridge that gap, helping organizations embed gen AI efficiently into their business processes and applications.”

The features can be used separately or as part of McKinsey’s various solutions, with the underlying architecture of the Iguazio platform facilitating generative AI adoption. In some examples, the platform can promote the efficient use of infrastructure such as cloud services and computing power by automating many tasks for engineers. AI infrastructure components such as Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing units can be shared across projects, helping keep costs down and making the most efficient use of resources.

Additional benefits include the ability to orchestrate and unify the data science process across teams and centrally integrate and manage data from different sources. The Iguazio platform can be deployed on-premises and in public, private and hybrid configurations and includes the advanced data lineage, tracking and privacy features required in highly regulated industries such as financial services and telecommunications.

“When McKinsey acquired Iguazio last year, we did it knowing we could quickly integrate its offering into our core QB technology offer to the benefit of enterprises interested in building out robust — and safe — gen AI functionality at scale,” said Ben Ellencweig, a senior partner at McKinsey. “The combination of Iguazio’s platform, McKinsey’s strategy and consulting expertise and our gen AI ecosystem of tech partners provides the full range of solutions for our clients as they harness the power of gen AI.”

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