AI Product & MVP Development in Chicago
The best AI Product & MVP Development in Chicago, at the best available price.
A real, production-grade build you can put in front of users or investors. Frontend, backend, mobile, the agentic AI underneath, and the cloud or private infrastructure it runs on, as one engagement rather than four vendors.
Chicago's economy is broad rather than tech first: trading and financial services, insurance, logistics, manufacturing and a large health care sector. Plenty of serious companies here run on software without thinking of themselves as software companies, which is where a senior technologist working part time tends to be most useful.
Chicago founders often come out of an industry rather than out of tech: logistics, insurance, health care. The build turns that domain knowledge into a working product, with the industry's data rules handled from the start.
What you get
- Full-stack build on Next.js, Node or Python, with a database and API design that survives past the MVP
- AI where it earns its place: LLM features, retrieval over your own documents, agent flows that call real tools, voice
- Auth, payments, analytics and an admin surface, not a demo that breaks on the second user
- Deployment across AWS, GCP or Azure, or private and on-premise hosting where the data demands it
- Clean, documented code on your own infrastructure, written to make us replaceable on purpose
Final pricing depends on scope, features and complexity, so we settle it on a call before any work starts.
Invoiced in USD, payable by Wise or bank transfer.
Request a callback
You speak to the engineer who does the work. No sales rep, no deck.
Who builds here
Fractional CTO Services
Chicago has many established businesses that run on software without a senior technologist at the top. Part-time CTO leadership fits that gap better than a full-time executive hire.
What Chicago companies build with us
Get it built at $0.
That is not a discount. It is when you pay. The work is split into checkpoints with acceptance criteria written down before anything starts, and each checkpoint is invoiced only after you have seen it and accepted it. No deposit.
- $0 to start
- You hold every dollar until a checkpoint is delivered and you accept it. No approval, no invoice.
- Fixed cost, unlimited features
- Or hire the team outright: one fixed monthly cost, unlimited feature development, any stack.
- The engineer takes your call
- The person on your first call is the one who architects and writes it. No account managers, no bench time.
A US agency quotes $50,000 to $150,000 for the same build and asks for 40 to 50% of it before a line is written. Account managers, project managers, sales commission and bench time. None of it appears in your product.
Three stages, nothing hidden.
Twenty-minute call
You talk to the engineer who will build it, not a sales rep. We scope the problem and you get told plainly if this is the wrong fit.
Fixed proposal in 48 hours
Fixed price, fixed timeline, defined deliverables, in writing. No hourly billing surprises and no open-ended scope.
Weekly demos until it ships
Working software every week, direct access over Slack or WhatsApp, and documentation handed over at the end.
What actually applies here.
Regulation and data
Illinois has the strictest biometric law in the country. The Biometric Information Privacy Act covers voiceprints and face geometry, requires written consent before collection and gives individuals a private right of action, so it matters for any voice or video AI product with Illinois users. A 2024 amendment limited damages to one violation per person rather than per scan, but the consent requirements are unchanged. Illinois has also amended its Human Rights Act to address discriminatory use of AI in employment decisions, and requires notice and consent when AI is used to analyse video interviews.
Contracting and payment
You contract with an individual consultant based in India rather than a US entity. Invoices are issued in USD and paid by Wise or bank transfer, with no payroll and no benefits load on your side. Whatever documentation your finance team or counsel needs from an overseas contractor is provided before work starts.
Working hours
Three or more hours of daily overlap with Central time, calls in your morning, and same-day replies on working days.
Does BIPA apply to an AI voice agent?
It can. If the system creates a voiceprint, meaning a biometric identifier used to recognise a speaker, Illinois requires informed written consent and a published retention policy. Transcription alone is a different question. We design voice products for Illinois users so that consent is collected or voiceprints are never created, and your counsel decides which.
What does a fractional CTO engagement look like for a Chicago mid-market company?
Usually a fixed number of days a month: a technical audit first, then ownership of architecture decisions, vendor management and hiring, with regular reporting to the CEO or board.
Is three days realistic?
For a working, demoable version of a core idea, yes, and that is what the three-day build is. A full production system with billing, admin and hardening takes weeks, not days. We will tell you which one your situation actually needs.
Do we own the code?
Entirely. It ships into your repository on your own cloud accounts, documented so your team or your next hire can pick it up without us.
Can you also host the AI model privately?
Yes, and as part of the same engagement. If compliance means inference cannot leave your network, the serving layer and the application are built together rather than handed between vendors.
MVP Development
A working MVP in as little as 3 days, from $1,000. Production-grade, not a throwaway prototype.