Who may commit AI budget?
If the answer is missing, the CAIO title is theatre.
Budget bearer is a seat field.
Not a salary guide. Not a vendor matrix copied from a PE 100-day plan.
I run retained AI Executive Search mandates from Hamburg for DACH seats. This page forces the budget owner into the brief, before longlist and chemistry begin.
The CAIO seat needs a named capacity to bind spend and vendors.
Too often CIO, CFO, and a CAIO title fight over the same signature.
Without clarity, search produces decorative offers.
With clarity, the market knows which yes the seat carries.
Not a salary or package guide.
Not a JD SERP with benefits lists.
Not a clone of the PE 100-day spend matrix for PortCos.
Not an H1 steal from the 90-day brief or the rights cut, adjacent, different product.
We invent no euro figures and no percentages.
Because candidates without budget-owner clarity test the mandate, and walk when the yes sits elsewhere.
Because boards without a budget bearer buy a title and block spend later.
Because retained search without this field stays research without judgment.
Who signs AI spend above the line?
Who may stop vendor contracts?
Who owns the failure when spend produces no proof?
Answers belong in the brief. Not in probation.
If the budget bearer is real, retain the AI Executive Search mandate with spend as a seat field.
If you are still googling compensation bands, you are not searching yet.
Budget bearer is not a JD nice-to-have. It is the condition that makes the yes buyable.
No. Seat field: who may commit. Not what the candidate earns.
Only if the commit path is concrete and signed.
Often as an axis, always as its own seat field.
