AI, now a company-wide skill
How torq.partners went from a technical AI Squad to every consultant using AI
70+
70+
Team members enrolled in the literacy path
Team members enrolled in the literacy path
Team members enrolled in the literacy path
80+
80+
people using Claude Cowork, 60+ of them daily
people using Claude Cowork, 60+ of them daily
people using Claude Cowork, 60+ of them daily
20+
20+
Live, hands-on build sessions delivered
Live, hands-on build sessions delivered
Live, hands-on build sessions delivered
The most practical AI training we've found
I don't know another course that gives you this much practical, useful content — from beginner AI all the way up to building with automation tools.
Christophe Wagner
|
Principal, torq.partners
The most practical AI training we've found
I don't know another course that gives you this much practical, useful content — from beginner AI all the way up to building with automation tools.
Christophe Wagner
|
Principal, torq.partners
The most practical AI training we've found
I don't know another course that gives you this much practical, useful content — from beginner AI all the way up to building with automation tools.
Christophe Wagner
|
Principal, torq.partners
The most practical AI training we've found
I don't know another course that gives you this much practical, useful content — from beginner AI all the way up to building with automation tools.
Christophe Wagner
|
Principal, torq.partners
About torq.partners
torq.partners is a Berlin-based finance consulting firm for startups, scale-ups and investors. It provides fractional and interim CFOs, finance operations, investor readiness, M&A advisory and due diligence, with 60+ finance experts from junior to CFO level and 800+ clients served, across offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Potsdam. Its consultants spend their days inside other companies' finance functions.
The challenge
torq.partners started with AI early. In 2025 they built an internal AI Squad: a handful of its most technical people, trained by 9x through a course, live sessions and a full-day co-build hackathon. The squad learned to take a workflow from idea to live automation, and colleagues across the firm started coming to them whenever something needed automating.
Scaling AI beyond the AI squad
A squad can only stretch so far. Its builders remained billable consultants, and the appetite for AI across the company had grown bigger than the few of them could serve. The firm wanted AI to be a skill everyone had, rather than a service concentrated in one small team.
The hard part was reach: getting a busy, distributed team, most of them not technical, to pick up AI and keep using it. Left to fit around client work, self-directed learning kept slipping down the list. Torq needed adoption that would stick across the whole firm.
Our solution
From spring 2026, 9x and torq.partners turned that AI Squad experiment into a standing, company-wide program.
One subscription, one path for everyone
9x set up a company-wide subscription so every person at torq.partners has full access, with a guided literacy path from AI Starter to AI Operator to Claude Cowork. The whole firm now works from the same baseline and the same vocabulary, from first-time users to the existing squad.
Backed by leadership, part of everyone's development
Access on its own moved slowly while training competed with client work, so torq.partners' leadership made the literacy path a shared, expected part of professional development and set a completion deadline for the firm. Leadership put its weight behind it and set aside time for people to do it. That backing is what moves completion.
Monthly live sessions to keep engagement
9x swapped the biweekly check-ins for monthly, torq-only sessions, shaped around whatever moves the firm toward AI literacy: what's new across the AI landscape, features worth adopting, or a function-specific use case built live, like an invoice extractor in Claude Cowork. A few team members had access to Claude Cowork but never used it; the 9x sessions helped them complete their first real task, so even those furthest from AI could find a way in.
Reporting built in
9x gives torq.partners' team live progress and completion reporting across the company. Torq can follow the rollout in real time and give a hand to anyone who's stuck, so support lands where it's needed.
A full-day hackathon in Berlin
In April 2026, 9x ran a full-day hackathon at Torq's Berlin office. A distributed team of 15 people that rarely work side by side spent a day building together a working internal AI agent, wired to their own tools, to answer everyday operational questions.
Outcomes
AI literacy is now a standard skill across torq.partners, sitting on top of the technical squad rather than depending on it.
Leadership backing gives the rollout traction. With the firm behind the path and a shared deadline in place, torq.partners has a reliable way to drive completion that access alone had never delivered.
The 2025 AI Squad still does what it does best. A technical core that co-builds and supports colleagues, now amplifying a company-wide baseline instead of standing in for one.
Adoption is visible. Reporting gives Torq's team a live view of who's engaging, so they can keep the rollout moving and support people through it.
A squad was enough to prove AI's value in a year. Making it a skill the whole firm shares took a different move: putting it on everyone's development plan, with leadership visibly behind it and the time set aside to do it.
About torq.partners
torq.partners is a Berlin-based finance consulting firm for startups, scale-ups and investors. It provides fractional and interim CFOs, finance operations, investor readiness, M&A advisory and due diligence, with 60+ finance experts from junior to CFO level and 800+ clients served, across offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Potsdam. Its consultants spend their days inside other companies' finance functions.
The challenge
torq.partners started with AI early. In 2025 they built an internal AI Squad: a handful of its most technical people, trained by 9x through a course, live sessions and a full-day co-build hackathon. The squad learned to take a workflow from idea to live automation, and colleagues across the firm started coming to them whenever something needed automating.
Scaling AI beyond the AI squad
A squad can only stretch so far. Its builders remained billable consultants, and the appetite for AI across the company had grown bigger than the few of them could serve. The firm wanted AI to be a skill everyone had, rather than a service concentrated in one small team.
The hard part was reach: getting a busy, distributed team, most of them not technical, to pick up AI and keep using it. Left to fit around client work, self-directed learning kept slipping down the list. Torq needed adoption that would stick across the whole firm.
Our solution
From spring 2026, 9x and torq.partners turned that AI Squad experiment into a standing, company-wide program.
One subscription, one path for everyone
9x set up a company-wide subscription so every person at torq.partners has full access, with a guided literacy path from AI Starter to AI Operator to Claude Cowork. The whole firm now works from the same baseline and the same vocabulary, from first-time users to the existing squad.
Backed by leadership, part of everyone's development
Access on its own moved slowly while training competed with client work, so torq.partners' leadership made the literacy path a shared, expected part of professional development and set a completion deadline for the firm. Leadership put its weight behind it and set aside time for people to do it. That backing is what moves completion.
Monthly live sessions to keep engagement
9x swapped the biweekly check-ins for monthly, torq-only sessions, shaped around whatever moves the firm toward AI literacy: what's new across the AI landscape, features worth adopting, or a function-specific use case built live, like an invoice extractor in Claude Cowork. A few team members had access to Claude Cowork but never used it; the 9x sessions helped them complete their first real task, so even those furthest from AI could find a way in.
Reporting built in
9x gives torq.partners' team live progress and completion reporting across the company. Torq can follow the rollout in real time and give a hand to anyone who's stuck, so support lands where it's needed.
A full-day hackathon in Berlin
In April 2026, 9x ran a full-day hackathon at Torq's Berlin office. A distributed team of 15 people that rarely work side by side spent a day building together a working internal AI agent, wired to their own tools, to answer everyday operational questions.
Outcomes
AI literacy is now a standard skill across torq.partners, sitting on top of the technical squad rather than depending on it.
Leadership backing gives the rollout traction. With the firm behind the path and a shared deadline in place, torq.partners has a reliable way to drive completion that access alone had never delivered.
The 2025 AI Squad still does what it does best. A technical core that co-builds and supports colleagues, now amplifying a company-wide baseline instead of standing in for one.
Adoption is visible. Reporting gives Torq's team a live view of who's engaging, so they can keep the rollout moving and support people through it.
A squad was enough to prove AI's value in a year. Making it a skill the whole firm shares took a different move: putting it on everyone's development plan, with leadership visibly behind it and the time set aside to do it.
For us, AI is a skill everyone needs, like Excel. 9x gave us a way to make it the default.
We decided AI shouldn't sit with a few specialists. It should be default knowledge for everyone at torq.partners, including new joiners. The courses give everyone the same basics, and the monthly session keeps us up to date, so nobody falls behind when the tools change.
Carolin Hesse
|
Consultant, torq.partners
For us, AI is a skill everyone needs, like Excel. 9x gave us a way to make it the default.
We decided AI shouldn't sit with a few specialists. It should be default knowledge for everyone at torq.partners, including new joiners. The courses give everyone the same basics, and the monthly session keeps us up to date, so nobody falls behind when the tools change.
Carolin Hesse
|
Consultant, torq.partners
