About
About SmartAI Labs
The approach is the difference.
SmartAI Labs is a Copenhagen-based AI consultancy founded by Guillaume Picard after almost a decade building AI systems at Apple, Electricity Maps, and FORCE Technology, and consulting on AI projects for over 20 companies across industries.
The consistent observation across that work: the technology is rarely what causes AI projects to fail. What causes them to fail is that the problem was never clearly defined, there was no realistic picture of what success looks like, and the hard questions were skipped before starting. Who owns this. What's feasible. What's the scope. What happens when it's done.
Those questions sound obvious, but the pace of AI makes them easy to skip. The most valuable skill isn't knowing the latest model or the newest framework. It's knowing which problems are worth solving and scoping them well enough to deliver.
SmartAI Labs is built on that approach. Every engagement starts with deep research into the domain and the business. The problem gets defined precisely before any building starts. The technology follows from the requirements, not the other way around.
Our principles.
The work ends at independence.
If only one person understands how the system works, the engagement hasn't succeeded. Every project is designed so the client's team can run, maintain, and evolve what was built without SmartAI Labs. Documentation, clean architecture, and knowledge transfer are part of the deliverable. The goal is never a dependency.
Start where the value is.
Not every problem needs a custom-built system. Sometimes the answer is configuring an existing tool. Sometimes it's a simple workflow. Sometimes it genuinely needs engineering. The first job is figuring out which, and being honest about it, even when that means recommending a smaller engagement or no engagement at all.
The bottleneck never just moves.
An AI system that speeds up one step while creating a new problem elsewhere is worse than doing nothing. Every build considers the full workflow: what feeds in, what comes out, who uses the output, and what changes downstream.
Honesty over engagement.
SmartAI Labs only takes on work where there's a genuine belief it will get the client where they need to go. If the problem is too small, the timing is wrong, or the project needs something different, the honest answer comes first.
Every engagement starts with a conversation. The goal is to figure out whether SmartAI Labs can help, what the right scope looks like, and what the first step is. If it's not a fit, that's an honest answer too.