Philip Rothaus

I founded R5 to give leaders an independent view on AI: informed by the people building it, and accountable to the people who have to run a business with it.

Before R5, I led the travel and hospitality industry group in Accenture’s data and AI business, from its Accenture Analytics days through Applied Intelligence. My teams built data platforms, forecasting and pricing systems using machine learning and optimization, and early chatbots.

I then became a Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, where I led the AI practice in the corporate business and helped shape the firm’s response to AI just as large language models arrived. The work became learning how to do things differently with them: standing up data rooms and rapid analysis for tuck-in acquisitions, and building financial models at a much greater clip. Across both firms, working with Fortune 500 and upper mid-market companies in travel and hospitality, industrials and private equity, I saw how large organizations take on new technology, and how often the limit is the organization’s capacity to change.

I also watched the business model change from the inside. Pricing built on large teams and pyramids was giving way to small, AI-leveraged teams of experts. To serve my clients well I needed to work with those experts, closer to the frontier labs and startups, and on my own terms, including advising founders who would never fit a big firm’s profile. That was the genesis of R5.

Today, through R5, I lead the build of AI products, advise executives and boards, and work directly with founders. I also hold advisory roles and equity in AI companies, which keep me close to how agentic systems are built, and to where they break. Where any of them bears on a client’s decision, R5 discloses it before the work begins.

I set R5 up to look ahead as well as decide because the decision in front of a leader is usually shaped by the ones coming after it.

I didn’t study computer science or finance. I majored in Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton with a concentration in translation, working where language and culture meet. It turned out to be a grounding for this era of AI that I couldn’t have anticipated: how language shapes people, how machines interpret it, and how to translate between domains.

I started out as an early employee at startups before going into consulting, so I have worked at both speeds: the fast-moving tech company and the large corporate firm.

I still speak both languages, and I write about what I see in the R5 Memos.

R5 is named for the five of us I grew up with.