Research Summary: Constellation Research's AI-First Service Firms

January 21, 2026

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) marks an exponential revolution unmatched by any other technology revolution to date. As humanity grapples with what it means to be human, expect a transformation in mission and purpose as traditional staffing pyramids move to diamonds and then back to smaller pyramids of control. With just a few deep domain experts and an amazing set of AI coding tools, solutions can be created at machine scale for the enterprise. Project times shrink from years to months, to weeks. In fact, highly effective tiny teams will not only be more nimble than their billion-dollar legacy behemoths, but also a 1,000-person firm with 50% or more digital labor could drive higher revenue per employee than a 500,000+-employee firm.

Today’s services firms are productizing, and product teams are servitizing. Struggling to find a repeatable model is the norm among legacy firms that lack an AI-first mindset. However, those firms that have built or are in the midst of transforming themselves have taken a different approach. More akin to Palantir’s approach, the forward-deployed engineer (FDE) approach is gaining steam among these new innovators.

As a result, organizations with an AI First mindset can build at the speed of thought and operate with a massive span of control through decision automation. The difference between successful AI natives and AI exponentials will be how well they succeed in achieving decision velocity and in pairing human ingenuity with the scale of digital labor to achieve exponential gains of 10x, 100x, and 1000x.

The Future is Here: The Next AI-First Service Firms

Constellation Research conducted a search for the top AI-first service firms in the Fall of 2025. Through surveys, outreach, customer references, formal and informal briefings, and customer reference calls, Constellation has put together a dynamic list that will be updated annually.

These AI-first firms show the following attributes:

Percentage of digital to human labor: 10-20%
Revenue per FTE: $100,000 to 200,000
Deployed agents in production: 25 to 100

At the highest level, a class of AI Exponentials emerged in our research, and these firms achieved:

Percentage of digital to human labor: >20%
Revenue per FTE: >$ 200,000
Deployed agents in production: >100

The Bottom Line: AI Brings Exponential Efficiency and Infinite Possibilities

Legacy organizations caught between two S-curves must quickly decide whether to start from scratch and migrate, or to modernize their technical debt within their existing organizational structures. Organizations embracing an AI-first approach will make the key architectural shift needed to gain an attacker’s advantage. Leaders can expect future pricing models to shift away from per-seat pricing to outcomes-based models in this new era. Moreover, future valuations will be built on the ability to compete with AI-first firms and the ability to scale human ingenuity and expertise with the scale of digital labor.

View the full 2026 AI-First Service Firms List here.

Your POV

Can a 1000 person firm eventually disrupt today's leading Services firms? Will we see smaller firms as a result?

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Disclosures

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy,stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website. * Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

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