Your AI pilots worked. Your P&L cannot prove it.
A two-week, fixed-price diagnostic for enterprise data and AI leaders. It tells your board which pilots to scale, which to stop, and the 90-day path to governed production.
£15,000 fixed. Two weeks. One decision-ready answer.
Thirty minutes, direct with Leon. No salesperson, no deck.
Inside the assessment
Written assessment + one-hour executive readout. Fixed scope, fixed price.
The Pilot Tax Assessment is a fixed-price (£15,000), fixed-scope, two-week diagnostic from Onyx Data for enterprise data and AI leaders whose AI pilots work technically but have not reached production. It delivers a Pilot Inventory, a Governance Gap Map, an ROI Visibility Plan and a 90-Day Path, as a written assessment plus a one-hour executive readout.
The named enemy
What is the Pilot Tax?
“The Pilot Tax is what you keep paying for AI that works but never ships.”
The Pilot Tax is the recurring cost an organisation pays when AI pilots succeed technically but never reach production: continued spend on stalled proof-of-concepts, delayed decisions, and governance debt that compounds while pilots wait for a production path.
Size your own number. Count every pilot older than six months with no production date. Add up their monthly run-rate. That is your Pilot Tax, and it renews every month the decision is deferred.
You are not alone in paying it: MIT’s State of AI in Business research (2025) found that 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots deliver no measurable P&L return.
The deliverables
What you get in two weeks
The Pilot Inventory
You will know, for every AI and data initiative in flight, whether it is earning, salvageable, or quietly dead. Most boards have never seen this list; the assessment gives you one.
The Governance Gap Map
You will know exactly which gaps block production (ownership, policy coverage, data readiness, platform reliability), scored against what your regulator and your board will ask, in the order to close them.
The ROI Visibility Plan
Your next AI investment conversation runs on numbers, not faith: the three to five board-level metrics that make value visible, with baselines set before anyone asks.
The 90-Day Path
Your highest-value stalled pilot gets a named owner, a sequenced plan, and marked decision points. A plan built to survive contact with your steering committee.
Delivered as a written assessment built to lift straight into your next board pack, plus a one-hour executive readout. Bring your CFO. If it helps, we will present the findings to your board with you.
The method
How the two weeks run
Evidence
- Kickoff with your named point of contact
- The full pilot inventory, every initiative in flight
- Short interviews with pilot owners and your platform lead
- Governance posture review against regulator and board expectations
The path
- The Governance Gap Map, scored
- ROI baselines set for the three to five board-level metrics
- The 90-Day Path, sequenced with owners and decision points
- Written assessment delivered, one-hour executive readout
What we need from you
Around six hours of leadership time across the fortnight: short sessions with pilot owners and your platform lead. Read-only access to pilot documentation, one named point of contact, and an NDA signed before we see anything. Your delivery teams keep running; we do the work.
£15,000 fixed. Two weeks. One decision-ready answer.
Book a 30-minute scoping callThe terms
What we will not do
No hidden phase two
The assessment is complete in itself. The 90-Day Path is written so your own team, or any partner you choose, can execute it. Follow-on work is a separate decision at a separate price.
No leaks, no reuse
The assessment and readout are delivered to you alone, under NDA, and you decide who else receives them. All deliverables and their intellectual property transfer to you on payment. Nothing is published, referenced or reused without your written consent.
No flattery
If the honest finding is that pilots should be shut down with no recoverable path, the report says so in writing. You are buying a decision, not a proposal.
The evidence
We do this in production, not in theory
Six weeks
from concept to production for Elcome and Starlink. Microsoft published the case study.
Read it on Microsoft.com →
Every assessment is led personally by Leon Gordon: Microsoft MVP, Forbes Technology Council, author of “Transforming AI Pilots Into Profit Centers”, Oxford Said AI Programme. Behind the 90-Day Path sit more than 60 Microsoft-certified consultants, if and when you want it built.
This is for you if you lead data or AI at an enterprise with pilots that worked technically and stalled commercially, and you answer to a board that wants a number. It is not for you if you are still choosing a platform, or you want a team of juniors and a 200-page deck.
FAQ
Questions boards ask
What is the Pilot Tax?
The Pilot Tax is the recurring cost an organisation pays when AI pilots succeed technically but never reach production. It shows up as continued spend on stalled proof-of-concepts, decisions delayed while teams wait for a production path, and governance debt that compounds quietly. MIT research (State of AI in Business, 2025) found 95% of enterprise generative AI pilots deliver no measurable P&L return. The term was coined by Leon Gordon of Onyx Data.
Why do working AI pilots never reach production?
Most AI pilots stall for governance reasons, not technical ones. Common blockers include unclear ownership, no policy coverage for AI outputs, data that is not production-ready, unreliable platform foundations, and no agreed metrics that make value visible to the board. The model worked; the operating conditions around it did not. Fixing the pilot rarely helps. Fixing ownership, governance and measurement does.
Who is the Pilot Tax Assessment for?
It is built for CDOs, CIOs, chief data and analytics officers and VPs of data at UK and EU enterprises with several AI pilots that worked technically but never reached production, and a CFO or board asking what the spend has returned. If you have one pilot and no board pressure, it is probably more than you need.
What does an AI pilot assessment cost in the UK?
The Pilot Tax Assessment from Onyx Data costs GBP 15,000, fixed price, delivered in two weeks. That covers a full inventory of your AI initiatives, a governance gap map, a board-level ROI visibility plan, and a 90-day path from your highest-value stalled pilot to governed production, plus a written assessment and a one-hour executive readout. There are no variable fees and no obligation to buy further work.
What do you need from my team?
Around six hours of leadership time across the two weeks: short sessions with pilot owners and your platform lead, read-only access to pilot documentation, and one named point of contact. We sign an NDA before we see anything, and we work around your calendar. Your delivery teams keep running; we do the work.
Who sees the report, and who owns it?
You do, on both counts. The assessment and readout are delivered to you alone, under NDA, and you decide who else receives them. All deliverables and their intellectual property transfer to you on payment. After the readout you can execute the 90-Day Path with your own team, with another partner, or with us. The plan works in all three cases.
Is this a pitch for a bigger Onyx engagement?
No. The assessment is fixed scope, fixed price, and complete in itself. The 90-Day Path names the work, the owners and the decision points whether or not Onyx Data delivers any of it. And if the honest answer is that pilots should be shut down, the report says so in writing. You are buying a decision, not a proposal.
Do we need to run Microsoft Fabric?
No. The diagnosis is platform-neutral: the Pilot Inventory, Governance Gap Map and ROI Visibility Plan apply whatever your stack. Where platform work turns out to be part of the answer, our production experience is deepest on Microsoft Fabric, including an engagement Microsoft published as a customer story.
The next step
Book the scoping call
Leon Gordon
CEO, Onyx Data. Microsoft MVP, Forbes Technology Council.
Every scoping call and every assessment is led personally by Leon Gordon. You bring the stalled pilot; we bring the questions that find the blocker. No pitch deck, no obligation. If the assessment is not the right fit, you will leave the call knowing that too.
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Not ready for the assessment? Read The Pilot Tax, the newsletter on why AI pilots stall and what boards should ask.
Last reviewed: 5 July 2026