Version 1, the Dublin-headquartered IT services firm, has been named a Leader in both service categories of ISG’s 2026 Generative AI Services Specialists report, which ISG published in October 2026 and Version 1 announced on November 3. Version 1 says it’s the third year in a row ISG has placed it as a Leader for generative AI. If you’re shortlisting AI consulting firms or generative AI development companies, the report is useful because it names the specialists ISG rates highest and says what it thinks each does well.
What ISG assessed
The report is part of ISG’s Provider Lens series and covers the global market. It splits generative AI work into two quadrants: Strategy and Consulting Services, meaning help with deciding which use cases to fund, data readiness, model choice and governance, and Development and Deployment Services, meaning building, integrating and running the systems in production. ISG says it assessed 111 companies, 22 qualified for each quadrant, and nine were rated Leaders in each.
The “specialists” label matters. ISG uses it for providers with fewer than 10,000 employees that are either built around a few industries or focused on a specific service area such as AI and analytics. The global giants are assessed separately: ISG’s large providers have more than $4 billion in revenue and over 100,000 staff. So this is a ranking of mid-sized and smaller firms, which is closer to the kind of partner most businesses hire for a generative AI project.
To qualify for the strategy quadrant, ISG asked for things like client references showing projects that moved from proof of concept into production with tracked value, advice on model selection, fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented generation, and working responsible AI and governance frameworks. Those are good questions to put to any firm you’re talking to, whether it’s in the report or not.
What ISG said about Version 1
ISG’s write-up describes Version 1 as having more than 4,200 employees with offices in Ireland, the U.K., the U.S., Spain, Australia and India. On the consulting side, ISG points to its AI Transformation Factory, a structured way of moving from prioritizing use cases to delivery and ongoing improvement, with a scoring framework that rates each idea on feasibility, business impact and readiness. ISG also notes that Version 1 builds governance into its consulting work from the start, aligned with rules such as the EU Data Act and EU AI Act, which will matter to buyers in regulated industries.
On development and deployment, ISG highlights lifecycle management of models after launch (monitoring, retraining and optimization), reuse of prebuilt AI components across projects, and integration with existing business systems through APIs and data pipelines. ISG did add a caution: it says Version 1 should raise its market visibility by turning its consulting methods into repeatable, industry-focused toolkits.
In its announcement, Version 1 CTO Brad Mallard said: “For Version 1, leadership isn’t simply about keeping pace with the technology. It’s about helping our customers move confidently from ambition and experimentation to secure, scalable solutions that deliver real business value.”
It’s the third ISG Leader placement Version 1 has announced in a week, after the Agentic AI Services report on October 27 and the AWS Ecosystem Partners report on October 28.
Four other Leaders are listed on TechBonna
Version 1 isn’t the only firm in our directory that ISG rated a Leader in both quadrants. The others are:
- Quantiphi, which ISG credits with governance-led advisory and production-grade delivery backed by model engineering and ongoing optimization.
- Sigmoid, which ISG notes for its depth in consumer goods, life sciences and financial services, and for combining custom model work, RAG and multi-modal AI with enterprise integration.
- Tiger Analytics, which ISG describes as combining data, analytics and generative AI into business-focused, production-ready deployments.
- Tredence, which ISG says uses its own platforms, ATOM.AI and RAPID, to speed up delivery, with governance, security and compliance controls built into deployment.
The remaining Leaders were Fractal Analytics, Lingaro, Network Science and Straive. Analytics8, another firm we list, was rated a Contender in both quadrants.
How to use this if you’re hiring
Analyst ratings are one input, not a shortlist on their own. ISG says itself that a firm missing from a quadrant isn’t necessarily a firm that can’t do the work: ISG may not have had enough information to place it, or it may not have met that quadrant’s eligibility criteria. Use the report to understand how each firm approaches strategy and delivery, then ask your own shortlist for the production case studies, governance approach and post-launch support that ISG looked for. Each profile linked above shows the firm’s services and offices, checked against its own website.
This story is based on Version 1’s announcement and the full ISG report Version 1 published alongside it.
