AI security and AI cost optimisation · Australia and New Zealand
Adopt AI safely. Run it profitably.
Sapient-X helps Australian businesses of 10 to 200 people use AI without leaking customer data or overspending on it. Two fixed-price reviews, delivered by senior engineers, with training so your own team stays in control.
Sydney · Melbourne · Brisbane · Remote across Australia and New Zealand
Core offers
Adopt AI without leaking customer data
Shadow AI discovery, data-flow and vendor review, prompt-injection testing of your own AI features, an AI use policy, Essential Eight and Privacy Act mapping, and a remediation quote. Works alongside your existing IT provider.
- Price
- $6,900
- Duration
- Two weeks
- Output
- Report, policy, fix plan
Know what every AI answer costs, then pay less for it
Token-level cost attribution by feature and customer, a quality baseline, and a ranked savings plan across model routing, caching, prompt trimming, retrieval tuning and agent limits. Dashboard and forecast included.
- Price
- $4,900
- Duration
- One week
- Output
- Savings plan, dashboard
Why work with Sapient-X
Senior practitioners only
Every engagement is staffed by engineers with ten or more years delivering production systems. No bench, no graduates learning on your project.
Fixed scope and price
Cost and scope are agreed in writing before work begins. If scope changes, we re-quote in writing. No open-ended timesheets.
Built to hand over
Documentation, policy and training are part of every engagement, so the result keeps working when we leave. Your systems, your team.
All services
The two reviews above are where most engagements start. Around them we offer the engineering disciplines a growing business needs, scoped for 10 to 200 people and priced so the work pays for itself within a year.
-
AI security review
A two-week, fixed-price review of how your business uses AI: shadow AI, data flows, vendor terms, prompt-injection testing, policy and Privacy Act readiness. Works alongside your IT provider.
-
AI cost audit
A one-week, fixed-price audit of what your AI features cost per answer and customer, with a ranked savings plan across model routing, caching, prompt trimming and agent limits.
-
AI and automation
Custom assistants, agents and document-processing pipelines built on frontier models and your own data. We start with the workflow that costs you the most hours, not the most impressive demo.
-
Data and analytics
A clean, governed data platform you can actually query. Pipelines from Xero, Shopify, HubSpot and your databases into a warehouse, with dashboards your team trusts.
-
Cloud and DevOps
AWS architecture, migration and cost reduction. Infrastructure as code, CI/CD and monitoring set up once and explained properly. Every engagement starts with a cost review aimed at cutting your bill in the first quarter.
-
Product engineering
Web and mobile products, APIs and integrations shipped by a small senior team. Good for a first version, a rebuild, or the feature your in-house team hasn't had time for.
-
Security and compliance
Practical security for growing companies: Essential Eight alignment, Privacy Act readiness, access control and the evidence you need when an enterprise customer sends a questionnaire.
-
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership for a few days a month: architecture decisions, vendor selection, hiring support and a roadmap your board can read. For founders who need a CTO before they can afford one.
Engagement model
Three stages, each with a fixed price and a defined end point. You may stop after any stage and retain everything produced.
Discover
We spend a week inside your business: interviews, systems review, data audit. You get a short written report ranking opportunities by return and effort, plus a fixed quote for the next stage.
One week · $4,900Build
A senior engineer and a lead work in sprints with weekly demos. Everything lives in your repositories and your cloud account from day one, so there is nothing to migrate later.
Three to ten weeks · fixed quoteHand over
Documentation, runbooks and recorded walkthroughs, followed by a training session for the people who will own the system. Optional light-touch support plan if you want us on call.
Included in every buildTraining
Short, practical courses on using, securing and paying for AI, taught by the engineers who deliver our consulting work. Public sessions run monthly in Sydney, Melbourne and online; every course is also available in-house.
AI for business leaders
What today's AI can and cannot do, how to find a real opportunity, how to budget for it, and how to manage risk and privacy. No code. Leaves you able to brief a vendor and judge the answer.
Securing LLM applications
For developers. Prompt injection, data exfiltration, retrieval access control and agent permissions, with hands-on attack and defence labs against a vulnerable assistant.
Building cost-efficient LLM applications
For developers. Cost attribution, evaluation sets, model routing, caching, prompt and retrieval trimming and agent limits, applied to a working application through the day.
Safe AI at work
For all staff. Using ChatGPT, Copilot and other AI tools without exposing customer data, aligned to your AI use policy, plus spotting AI-generated scams.
Custom in-house program
Any course above, or a mix, delivered to your team on your systems and your data. Common formats are a one-day workshop or a four-week program alongside a review or build.
Representative engagements
Typical engagements: the problem, the approach, and the results this work aims for. All engagements.
Eleven unapproved AI tools found, one customer-data leak closed, in two weeks
A 60-person payments company discovers where staff and vendors are sending customer data to AI models, fixes a prompt-injection flaw in its own assistant, and passes a bank's AI questionnaire.
Read the case studyRepresentative · AI cost audit · SoftwareAI model spend cut by 54% with no measurable loss in answer quality
A legal-tech scaleup attributes its model bill to features and customers, then cuts it by more than half through routing, caching and retrieval tuning, verified against an evaluation set.
Read the case studyPricing
Three ways to engage. Each has a price that can be approved before work begins, and none has a minimum term.
Review
$4,900 to $6,900 · fixed
A fixed-price audit with a written report and a quote for what comes next.
- AI cost audit · one week · $4,900
- AI security review · two weeks · $6,900
- Discovery sprint for other work · one week · $4,900
- Leadership briefing included
Build
from $18,000 fixed quote
Remediation, optimisation or a new AI system, delivered end to end.
- Senior engineer plus a lead, dedicated
- Weekly demos, code in your repositories
- Documentation, runbooks and handover training
- Thirty days of fixes after launch
Partner
from $3,500 per month
A fractional AI lead for ongoing security, cost and architecture decisions.
- Named senior engineer, set days per month
- Quarterly AI security and cost re-reviews
- Vendor, model and architecture decisions
- Cancel with thirty days' notice
All prices in Australian dollars, excluding GST. Build quotes depend on scope; most land between $18,000 and $45,000. Registered startups under two years old receive 15% off their first engagement.
About Sapient-X
- Founded
- Sydney, Australia
- Team
- Senior engineers and architects, ex-enterprise consulting and product companies
- Clients
- Startups and businesses of 10 to 200 people across Australia and New Zealand
- Platforms
- AWS first, with Microsoft and Google Cloud where you already live
Large consultancies do excellent work and charge accordingly. That leaves most Australian businesses choosing between an invoice they cannot justify and a freelancer they cannot rely on.
Sapient-X was founded by engineers who spent years inside those firms and wanted to bring the same rigour to smaller organisations at a fraction of the overhead. There are no account managers, no bench and no pyramid of juniors: you deal directly with the people doing the work.
We also hold that the fastest way to make an organisation capable with AI is to teach the people in it, which is why training sits alongside consulting.
Questions
The questions most often raised in a first conversation.
How much does AI consulting cost for a small business in Australia?
With Sapient-X, the AI cost audit is $4,900 for one week and the AI security review is $6,900 for two weeks, both fixed price. Builds start from $18,000 and most land between $18,000 and $45,000. All prices are in AUD and exclude GST.
Do you only work with companies in Sydney?
No. We are based in Sydney and work in person in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and remotely with businesses across Australia and New Zealand.
Who owns the code and the AI system you build?
You do. Everything lives in your own repositories and cloud account from day one, and there are no lock-in contracts.
Is our data safe when you build AI on it?
We build inside your cloud account, follow Privacy Act and Essential Eight guidance, and choose model providers and regions that keep your data where it needs to be. We document the data flows so you can answer customer and auditor questions.
What happens after the project ends?
Every build includes documentation, runbooks, recorded walkthroughs and a training session for the people who will own the system, plus thirty days of fixes after launch. An optional monthly support plan is available.
Arrange a conversation
Choose a time that suits you. You will speak with an engineer, and by the end of the 30 minutes you will know whether we can help and the likely cost.
Calendar not loading? Open the booking page.
Or write to us
Describe the problem and we will reply within one business day.