The SI Rallying Cry
When we were raising money, we came across a school of VC thinking which said, “Why would we invest in a platform that helps System Implementation firms (SIs)? With AI, those firms will no longer be necessary. Systems will just implement themselves.”
They’re wrong.
Imagine a world without SIs. At every major technological change (internet, SaaS, mobile, IoT), who led the way? Who rolled up their sleeves, learned the emerging tech, and partnered with their customers to deploy these new technologies? Who figured out exactly how this stuff gets applied in the real world? Who put themselves, their careers, and their companies on the line to drive results with emerging technology for real customers?
And who figured out how to get companies to change their ways of working in order to adopt the technology? SIs. Not VCs or PE, not tech media, not LinkedIn influencers (who can often be like food critics who have never stepped into a kitchen), and not even the technology platform providers themselves.
I believe SIs have been, and will be, the heroes of this story. Investments in core and frontier AI technologies will only realize their true potential through you.
But that's not what this post is about.
This is a rallying cry for SI’s. It’s about what will separate the SIs that will thrive, from the ones that won’t.
If you’re an SI leader thinking about your firm’s future—whether that’s a PE transaction, an acquisition, or just building something durable—you already know the landscape has shifted.
Acquirers and investors are looking for 15-20 points of EBITDA and a credible story about how you’re building the AI-enabled consultancy of the future. They want to see that you’ve figured out how to scale expertise without linearly scaling headcount. That your margins aren’t entirely dependent on billable hours. That you’re not just talking about AI transformation, but living it.
The firms that can demonstrate this will command premiums. The ones still selling hours the same way they did five years ago will struggle to find investors, or find themselves acquired at a discount.
The Market Is Moving Fast
Consider the scale of what’s happening. According to Menlo Ventures' 2025 State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report, enterprise AI spend hit $37 billion this year—up from $11.5 billion in 2024. That’s 3.2x growth in twelve months, the fastest-scaling software category in history.
The build-vs-buy debate is over. In 2024, enterprises were split. 47% built their AI solutions, 53% purchased. Today, 76% of AI use cases are purchased rather than built internally. Companies aren’t spinning up bespoke LLM stacks. They’re buying complex, best-of-breed solutions.
And they need someone to implement them. Healthcare alone captured $1.5 billion in vertical AI spend this year, nearly tripling year-over-year. Legal hit $650 million. This isn’t slowing down.
The SIs that position themselves as the bridge between purchased AI tools and actual business value will capture this demand. And build the kind of enterprise value that attracts serious investors and buyers.
The Four-Front Advantage
Here’s what makes this moment so pivotal: SIs aren’t just leading clients through AI transformation. They need to transform how they themselves capture knowledge, staff engagements, and deliver at scale at the same time. The firms pulling ahead are winning on four fronts simultaneously.
- Applied AI Expertise
With $19 billion going to the application layer alone, the SIs that can translate that spend into outcomes will pull away from the ones that can’t. Doing that consistently means your team’s delivery knowledge can’t live in the heads of a few senior people (Individual Intelligence). It has to be captured, systematized, and accessible across engagements, so every project benefits from what you learned on the last one (Collective Intelligence). Nor can your firm’s industry knowledge live with a few analysts, it needs to be immediately put in the path of work, enabling your sales and delivery teams to pivot when something changes today (Compounding Intelligence). Acquirers want proof you can put this stuff to work—both for your customers and yourself—and keep pace as the technology evolves.
- Industry + Platform Depth
Generalist shops will struggle. The premium goes to firms that combine deep vertical expertise with platform mastery—Salesforce, Microsoft, ServiceNow—and understand how AI is reshaping capabilities within each. Knowing the industry isn’t enough. This means the knowledge your senior consultants carry can’t walk out the door when they do. It has to be retained and operationalized so the firm can keep compounding its expertise.
The winners will have institutional depth. They will know the industry, the platforms, and how AI changes what’s possible at the intersection.
- Change and Governance
Technology doesn’t adopt itself. Someone has to lead organizations through the operational and cultural shifts required to actually use what they’ve bought. The firms scaling this capability aren’t starting every engagement from scratch. They’re codifying their methodologies, turning their collective intelligence into reusable frameworks their teams can deploy consistently.
And as explainability and governance go mainstream, enterprises will demand audit logs, steerable outcomes, and defensible decision-making from their AI systems. The SIs that can deliver change activation and technical governance at scale will own a capability that’s increasingly non-negotiable and hard to replicate.
- Business Model Innovation
This is the one that trips up most firms. It’s easy to sell AI transformation to clients. It’s harder to transform yourself. This means embedding AI into how you scope, staff, deliver, and capture knowledge.
Acquirers are looking for firms that use AI to improve their own margins, accelerate delivery, and reduce dependence on senior headcount for every engagement. Sophisticated investors and buyers can smell it a mile away if you’re pitching AI-enabled efficiency to clients while still running a pure linear growth model yourselves.
The Multiplier Effect
When you’re strong on all four fronts, here’s what happens: they compound.
Your applied AI expertise makes you better at transforming clients. That transformation work generates reusable IP and delivery patterns. Those patterns let you staff more efficiently and price more creatively: fixed-price, fixed-capacity, value-based. Better unit economics mean better margins. Better margins mean better multiples.
The firms that figure this out aren’t just surviving the AI transition. They’re using it to build the kind of enterprise value that was never possible in a pure linear growth model.
You Don’t Have to Go It Alone
We’ve spent our careers building and scaling consulting firms. We’ve lived through every technology wave. And we’ve seen what separates the firms that create lasting enterprise value from the ones that just keep grinding.
The difference isn’t size. It’s whether you’ve built the operating system that lets you scale expertise, preserve institutional knowledge, and deliver with AI-enabled efficiency. Without losing what makes your firm valuable in the first place.
That’s what we’re building at Moonnox.
