Michael Anckaert
AI strategy that ships.
Advisory for technical leaders who want strategy backed by code that actually runs in production. Partner and Head of Data & IT at Dewaele. Author of Strategy & Stack.
What I do
Three kinds of engagement
I work with three kinds of organizations:
Teams that are about to spend serious money on AI and want a second opinion from someone who has shipped it themselves. I review the architecture, the build vs. buy decision, and the assumptions underneath both. The deliverable is usually a short document, a sharp conversation, and one phone call per week for a quarter.
Teams that have AI in production and aren't happy with the unit economics. I help them understand where their money is going — typically not where they think — and decide what to keep, replace, or remove. This is the work I do most often, and it almost always ends with a smaller AI footprint than where it started.
Teams that need a Head of AI for a quarter but don't need to hire one yet. Fractional advisory at the operator level: I sit in your weekly leadership cadence, in the architecture reviews, and in the vendor conversations. Up to one day a week, capped engagements.
Publication
I write Strategy & Stack
A weekly publication on AI strategy from someone who still writes the production code. Most AI strategy is written by people who have never deployed a model. This isn't that.
About
Why I still write the code
I'm Partner and Head of Data & IT at Dewaele, an independent Belgian real estate group. I run Sinax independently. I've been shipping software for two decades, and I still write the production code. That's the whole point: the strategy I publish has to survive its own deployment.
Contact
Want to talk?
Email is fastest. If you'd rather schedule a call, my calendar is open.