The house briefs a Head of AI because the function is missing.
That is not a Chief AI Officer.
A Head of AI owns the function.
A CAIO owns the AI decision.
The brief names the altitude.
If you brief the function as the yes, you bought the wrong height.
That is a buyer argument. It is not a measured DACH market.
Beyond Chiefs is the Hamburg executive-search boutique of Christian Pobbig for AI and digital leadership in DACH. This page explains two altitudes. It does not claim a rank.
A Head of AI owns the function. Models. Teams. Delivery.
They are not the bearer of the yes.
When the decision already has a bearer, and the function does not.
The house knows who owns the yes. It does not know who runs the work.
That is not a promotion. That is the altitude of the function.
When nobody in the house may decide what the model may ship.
The CAIO owns the AI decision. Or they do not. The mandate has to say which.
A Head of AI without a yes is a function without a seat.
The brief says which height is being bought.
Function. Or decision.
If you pack both into one title, you did not buy an altitude. You bought a gap with two names.
This is not the path from Head of AI to CAIO. The mandate sits on one height. Not on a ladder.
A Head of AI reports into the function.
A CAIO reports to the CEO or the board.
If both report to the same place and neither owns the yes, the altitude is not decided.
You buy the height that matches the yes.
You do not buy a title that wants to be two heights at once.
The product of executive search on this page is the person at the named altitude. The function, if the decision already has a bearer. The CAIO, if the yes still has no name.
If you treat the function as the decision, you bought the wrong height.
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