EST. MMXXVI
JOHANNESBURG · BOULDER
26.2°S / 40.0°N
A studio for applied artificial intelligence

We build the AI
your business will actually
use on Monday morning.

Atelier AI is a two-principal studio working with a small number of companies each year to design, build, and deploy artificial intelligence that earns its keep — not pilots, not whitepapers, not vendor decks.

A studio, not a vendor.

The AI consulting market is full of slide decks and stalled pilots. We chose a different shape on purpose: a small studio, a handful of clients per quarter, and the two principals personally engaged with every client from the first conversation to the last line of code shipped.

We take the work that matters — the integrations that change a P&L, the agents that retire a job nobody wants to do, the data pipelines that finally make Monday's numbers trustworthy. We turn down the rest.

— On scope
We work with 6–10 clients per year. Engagements run 6–16 weeks. Every project ships something running in production, owned by you, on your infrastructure.

— On approach
Boutique rates, transparently scoped. We are, often, the last AI vendor a client hires.

Three lines of work.

/ I.
Agent Engineering Software that does the job, not just suggests it

We design and build AI agents that take real actions inside your business — processing documents, drafting and sending communications, querying systems, handing off to humans only when judgment is required.

Typical engagements: a delivery-note extraction agent that retires a manual data-entry role; a sales-research agent that prepares every meeting for your BDRs; an internal helpdesk agent grounded in your own knowledge base.

LLM Orchestration Tool Use Evals Human-in-the-loop
/ II.
Applied Systems Internal applications, built fast, built to last

We build internal business applications using AI as both the engine inside the product and the accelerator that lets us ship in weeks instead of quarters. You get a working system, the source code, deployment, and a clear handover.

Typical engagements: dashboards that replace fragile spreadsheets, line-of-business apps that wrap a workflow your team currently runs in email, AI-native rebuilds of legacy tools nobody enjoys using.

Full-stack Production-grade You own the code
/ III.
Data & Decision Pipelines From raw systems to numbers leadership trusts

We build the unglamorous plumbing — ingestion, warehousing, modelling — and then the layer on top: AI-generated narratives, anomaly explanations, and executive briefings that make the data actually useful to the people running the business.

Typical engagements: a Snowflake-backed BI layer with a natural-language query interface, weekly AI-authored revenue commentary delivered to the leadership team, anomaly detection wired to Slack.

ELT / ETL Warehouse AI Narratives Exec Reporting

How an engagement runs.

i
Conversation
A 90-minute working session. We map the problem,
the constraints, and whether we're the right studio for it.
ii
Brief
A written brief: scope, deliverables, timeline,
fixed price. You sign or you don't. No retainer trap.
iii
Build
6–16 weeks. Weekly working sessions.
Every Friday you see what shipped that week.
iv
Handover
Code, infrastructure, documentation, training.
You own everything. Optional retainer if you want us nearby.

Two principals. One practice.

Co-Principal · Engineering
Juan
Owner and principal of Lookopen, a South African digital studio with nearly two decades of work delivering solutions and services for clients across Africa, Europe, and the United States. Brings the operational discipline and client relationships that turn a good idea into a working business. Based in South Africa.
Co-Principal · Architecture
Dyllan
Almost thirty years in the technology industry, including a decade running his own consultancy. Has served as CTO across two significant businesses and consults on AI integration to companies on two continents. Based in Boulder, Colorado.

Tell us what's on your mind.

hello@atelier-studio.ai

Studio · ZA
Johannesburg
South Africa
Studio · US
Boulder, Colorado
United States
Engagement window
Q2 2026 onward
2 slots remaining