KPMG is building a Silicon Valley-style incubator to help sidestep Big Four bureaucracy

KPMG is forming a new division to bring Silicon Valley-like speed to some of its operations.

The new Client Technology & Innovation (CT&I) group will serve as an incubator to boost innovation.

KPMG is ready to "go head-to-head" with startups' disruptive spirit, the division's new boss told us.

The Big Four consulting and accounting firms and Silicon Valley startups sit at opposite ends of the business spectrum.

On one side are KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, and EY: century-old brands built on reputation, rigorous processes, and dependable, if unsexy, business services. On the other side are nimble and innovative startups that have made a virtue of moving fast and breaking things.

In the age of AI, KPMG is trying to carve out more space for that Silicon Valley mentality.

On Tuesday, it announced the formation of a new division, the Client Technology & Innovation (CT&I) group.

The group will comprise several hundred staffers, and KPMG plans that it will operate separately from its three main business lines — audit, tax, and advisory. Its main remit is to accelerate innovation, both for client products and solutions and within the firm itself.

It will look "like a Silicon Valley incubator within the walls of KPMG," Todd Lohr, KPMG's vice chair and head of CT&I, told Business Insider.

The unit will bring together capabilities previously dispersed across the firm, including innovation, data and AI, product and platform development, commercial teams, and strategic partnerships with tech leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Centralizing those capabilities will help KPMG move faster at a time when speed has become "paramount" to the firm, said Lohr.

KPMG has roughly 276,000 employees globally and, like its fellow Big Four firms , is built on a structure that doesn't lend itself to speed.

Rather than a small executive team calling the shots, the firms are topped by a partnership that typically votes on major changes. Underneath the partnership sit layers of consultants, accountants, and lawyers serving different industries and geographies.

"It's not that we hadn't focused on innovation," said Lohr. "It's just we did it within the current course and speed of our business," where client service and the day job always come first.

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