An AI consultant based in Charleston, SC
O'Donnell AI is a one-person AI operations firm based in Charleston, run by Jake O'Donnell, a licensed professional engineer. We map, build, and run AI automation for businesses across the metro, starting with a $2,500 AI Ops Audit (the first three clients pay $1,000 because we are building our public case-study bench). If you would rather talk it through in person, we will come to you.
What a local operator gets you
Hire a remote agency and your project tends to live in a ticket queue. Hire us and you get a named human who lives here, answers his own email, and can be at your office. Automation projects live or die on the details of how your business actually runs, and those details come out in a working session at your desk, not on a short discovery call.
Accountability is also simpler when your consultant is down the road. If something breaks, we are across town, not across time zones. And since we are a one-person firm, our reputation in this city is the whole business. We cannot afford to hand you a system that quietly stops working after the invoice clears.
Where we work
We are based in Charleston and cover the whole metro. Downtown, Mount Pleasant, Daniel Island, West Ashley, North Charleston, and Summerville are all an easy drive, and we are glad to come to you for kickoffs, working sessions, and monthly reviews.
Beyond the metro we serve businesses across South Carolina and the Southeast, with on-site visits available. Industrial and plant engagements are quoted individually rather than at published rates.
The work we take on
Most engagements start with an AI Ops Audit. It costs $2,500 flat, takes about two weeks, and ends with a written map of the automatable work in your business with the time savings put in dollars, plus one quick win implemented before the report lands. The first three clients pay $1,000, openly because we are building our public case-study bench.
From there we build systems at a fixed scope and a fixed price, $5,000 to $15,000 each, on accounts you own. The systems we build most often for local businesses look like this.
If you want it run for you afterward, managed operations is $1,500 to $2,000 per month, month to month with no long-term contract. Failures get caught the day they happen, not the week the invoice goes missing. Every run is logged and checked against rules written for your business, and the monthly report says in plain English what got done.
- Quoting, drafted from your own pricing rules and ready for a human to review
- Follow-up on leads and open invoices, so nothing depends on someone remembering
- Reporting, with the numbers you actually want assembled for you on schedule
- Pipeline hygiene, keeping CRM records current instead of letting them decay
- Content operations, drafting and scheduling on a steady cadence
- Back-office paperwork, the forms and data entry nobody wants to do
The engineer behind the firm
O'Donnell AI is one person, and that person is me, Jake O'Donnell. I am a licensed professional engineer, and before this I built and operated industrial gas systems, including a commercial CO2 recovery plant. Running a plant teaches a specific discipline, which is that things must keep working when nobody is watching.
I hold my own automation to that standard. I started building my personal fleet in February 2026, and about 135 days later it runs 70 scheduled jobs with more than 10,000 logged runs. The failure rate went from 23.7% in May 2026 to 2.0% in June 2026, and the telemetry is published publicly, so you can see exactly how it performs before you pay us anything.
Questions we hear
How much does an AI consultant cost in Charleston?
Our AI Ops Audit is $2,500 flat and takes about two weeks, and the first three clients pay $1,000 because we are building our public case-study bench. Automation builds run $5,000 to $15,000 at fixed scope and fixed price. Managed operations is $1,500 to $2,000 per month, month to month, with no long-term contract.
Will you actually come to our office?
Yes. We are based in Charleston and meet in person across the metro, including downtown, Mount Pleasant, Daniel Island, West Ashley, North Charleston, and Summerville. Working sessions at your office are usually where the best automation candidates surface, so we prefer it.
What happens to the automations if we stop working with you?
They keep working, and they stay yours. Everything is built on accounts you own, so you keep the accounts, the keys, the data, and everything we built. AI usage costs pass through at cost with no markup, so leaving does not change what the systems cost to run.
You are a one-person firm. Is that a risk for us?
It is a fair question, and it is part of why we build everything on accounts you own rather than ours. If we vanished tomorrow, your systems would keep running, and because you hold the keys and the accounts, another technical person could pick them up. You are never locked to us.
Do you work with industrial or manufacturing operations?
Yes. Jake is a licensed professional engineer who built and operated industrial gas systems, including a commercial CO2 recovery plant. Industrial and plant assessments and builds are quoted individually, not at the published rates on this site.
We are local, say hello
Send us the workflow that eats the most of your week and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth automating, no charge and no pitch. If a conversation is easier, we will meet you for coffee anywhere in the metro.