New practice, part of the Deloitte global network, aims to help clients build and scale Agentic AI using a mix of open and proprietary models
TORONTO, Sept. 9, 2026 /CNW/ --
Key takeaways
- Deloitte's Open Model Engineering practice is designed to help clients deploy enterprise AI applications with greater flexibility, cost predictability, sovereignty, and enhanced control over their data, intellectual property, model behavior, and inference transparency.
- At the outset, the practice will work with Deloitte firm clients in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific developing enterprise AI applications and products built on open-source AI frameworks and open models.
- Deloitte plans to hire, train, and certify forward deployed engineers through fiscal year 2027 to grow the new practice.
Why this matters
Deloitte Canada today announced the launch of its Open Model Engineering practice, a coordinated client offering with Deloitte firms around the globe. The move is an expansion of Deloitte's AI services portfolio, reflecting how enterprises and governments are increasingly evaluating open AI models as a way to gain deployment flexibility, manage cost, and increase choices through a mixture of models. Deloitte's new Open Model Engineering practice aims to help organizations design, engineer, deploy and operate AI solutions using open models and full stack open-source engineering tailored to each client's business requirements, regulatory environment and technology footprint.
"As organizations accelerate their AI ambitions, they need the flexibility to adopt the right models, platforms, and deployment approaches for their unique business needs," said Joel So, Engineering AI & Data National Practice Leader for Deloitte Canada. "Deloitte's Open Model Engineering practice helps clients navigate those choices with confidence, balancing innovation, control, and scalability while maximizing the value of their AI investments. Combined with our end-to-end transformation capabilities, we're helping Canadian organizations turn AI potential into measurable business outcomes and build the foundations for long-term growth."
Building an Open Model Engineering practice in Canada and around the globe
Deloitte firms are rolling out Open Model Engineering services across multiple geographies to help clients evaluate, adopt, and scale open models alongside their existing AI investments, with an initial focus in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific.
- Enterprises today are navigating four important considerations in AI deployment: flexibility to select the right model and architecture for each workload, predictable cost economics as Agentic AI usage scales, sovereignty over where and how models are deployed, and control over enterprise data, intellectual property (IP), and model behavior with transparency on inference.
- Through Deloitte's Open Model Engineering practice, Deloitte can help Canadian clients:
- Make model and architecture choices selecting from proprietary models, open models, Agentic platforms, cloud services, and/or on-premises infrastructure;
- Manage token economics by choosing the right model, infrastructure and deployment patterns, resulting in improved return on investment;
- Provide greater flexibility to build AI applications of open models, while further fine-tuning them for geographical, linguistic and cultural context; and
- Gain greater choice over where models run, what data is uploaded, and how competitive advantage is retained by protecting IP and the uniqueness of generated inference.
Agentic AI capabilities powered by NVIDIA Nemotron family of open models
Deloitte's Open Model Engineering practice will initially focus on developing enterprise AI applications built on NVIDIA Nemotron open models and NIM microservices. Deloitte firms will also help clients build Sovereign AI stacks using open-source AI frameworks, fine tune open models, and enhance cyber defenses with open harnesses.
"Enterprises need both open and proprietary models for different workloads," says Kari Briski, vice president of generative AI at NVIDIA. "Deloitte's Open Model Engineering practice, built on NVIDIA Nemotron models, gives developers greater control over enterprise data and proprietary information while enabling secure, responsible deployment of Agentic AI."
As part of this practice, Deloitte firms will leverage the Zora AITM digital workforce platform, with agentic harness capabilities built on NVIDIA Nemotron open models and NIM. This gives clients a path to deploy, continuously optimize and govern AI agents using open models within their own environments.
Investing in talent: Forward deployed engineers
Deloitte plans to hire, train, and certify forward deployed engineers globally certified in open models. These specialists will work directly alongside Deloitte firm clients to implement open model solutions and will serve as the operational foundation of the new practice.
Click here for more information on Deloitte's engineering capabilities.
About Deloitte Canada
At Deloitte, our Purpose is to make an impact that matters. We exist to inspire and help our people, organizations, communities, and countries to thrive. Our work underpins a prosperous society where people can find meaning and opportunity. It builds consumer and business confidence, empowers organizations to find imaginative ways of deploying capital, enables fair, trusted, and functioning social and economic institutions, and allows our friends, families, and communities to enjoy the quality of life that comes with a sustainable future. And as the largest Canadian-owned and operated professional services firm in our country, we are proud to work alongside our clients to make a positive impact for all Canadians.
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