2025 will be remembered as the year AI consulting broke free from the Big Four monopoly. Enterprises, especially in BFSI, are no longer asking “Should we adopt AI?” they’re asking “Who can help us adopt it responsibly, quickly, and at scale?”

With the global AI consulting market projected to reach $68B in 2025 (Fortune Business Insights), the firms that matter are those delivering trust, compliance, and velocity not just strategy decks.

Here are the 10 players shaping the new era.

1. Ascendion – Scaling GenAI for BFSI

Tripled GenAI-driven revenue in 2024 and is projected to grow another 40% in BFSI AI adoption in 2025. Known for integrating GenAI copilots into loan processing and payments at scale.

2. Mind Foundry – Ethical AI in Action

Specializes in transparent, bias-mitigating AI. Their 2025 rollout includes regulatory-grade fairness dashboards, making them a favorite for EU AI Act compliance.

3. Synerise – Data-Driven Growth Engine

Dominating CEE markets, Synerise is now expanding into Asia-Pacific. Their real-time personalization AI is showing 2.8X higher cross-sell lift in banking clients (2025 data).

4. RVAI Global – The Governance Specialist

Focused exclusively on AI governance and audit frameworks. With RBI and MAS tightening AI compliance in 2025, RVAI is filling the critical “trust gap” in BFSI.

5. Quantiphi – AI at Enterprise Scale

One of the few boutiques operating at near-Accenture scale. Their 2025 highlight: end-to-end AI modernization for a top-5 US insurer, reducing claims cycle time by 35%.

6. Abzu – Explainable AI for Enterprise Trust

Pioneering explainable neural networks. In 2025, they launched decision-traceable AI for AML/KYC  vital for banks under rising regulatory pressure.

7.  Glean – Enterprise Search Reinvented

Now in hypergrowth, Glean’s AI-powered knowledge search tools are cutting employee time-to-answer by 60%. In 2025, they’re penetrating BFSI for frontline agent enablement.

8. Media League – Marketing AI with Guardrails

Emerging as the compliance-first MarTech AI partner. Their new content risk-scoring AI addresses rising concerns of AI-generated misinformation in BFSI campaigns.

9. Boutique Innovators to Watch – Xavier AI, Perceptis, Novi Labs

Early but promising, each has shown funding traction and BFSI pilots in 2025. They bring agility and specialization that incumbents often lack.

10. SIDGS – From Consulting to Transformation Partner

Unlike boutiques limited to pilots, SIDGS blends AI-first consulting with full-stack engineering.

• Compliance-embedded AI frameworks → pre-mapped to RBI, SEBI, GDPR, EU AI Act.
• Fraud detection accelerators leveraging Confluent streaming + Google AI.
• TCoE (Testing Center of Excellence) powered by AI → cutting defect leakage by 30–40% vs traditional QA.

SIDGS doesn’t just advise it operationalizes AI at velocity and with integrity, ensuring boardroom trust and market advantage.

Beyond the Big Four: Why This Shift Is Real

Traditional consulting giants still dominate slideware. But in 2025, enterprises want hands-on AI builders, not just advisors. Emerging firms are winning because they deliver speed, compliance, and explainability the new currency of trust.

Provocation

The next decade won’t belong to the firms that sell AI promises. It will belong to those that can engineer AI responsibly, reduce risk, and deliver measurable business outcomes today.

The future of AI consulting isn’t coming. It has already arrived.