Comparison updated August 2026
Side by side
Published data on both agencies. Where one side measurably differs, the dot marks it: the higher score, the lower published rate, the larger team, the more recent review. Which of those is an advantage depends on your brief.
| Attribute | Artefact | Unit8 |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial score | 74.8/100 | 74.8/100 |
| Hourly rate | Contact for rates | Contact for rates |
| Team size | Larger team: 1000+ | 50-249 |
| Location | Paris, France | Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Founded | — | 2017 |
| Last reviewed | Aug 5, 2026 | More recent review: Aug 7, 2026 |
What we said about each
Our take on Artefact
The Bpifrance engagement is the one to read first. Artefact took agentic AI from experiment to scale across 500 employees at a public investment bank, and what came out of it was not one assistant but more than 1,500 individual agents built by the business teams themselves. That is a different claim from most agentic case studies, which describe a system rather than an adoption curve.
Reviewed Aug 5, 2026
Read the full assessment →Our take on Unit8
The practice is built around Palantir Foundry, and the published work shows what that buys: a supply-chain control tower that cut a global retailer's out-of-stock levels by half, early-warning indicators for risk and fraud at a major Swiss bank, a Foundry center of excellence at a financial institution, and a blending-optimization algorithm at a Swiss chemical company reported at roughly CHF 400,000 saved per year. Client names appear on the roster (Daimler, Merck, Swiss Re, Firmenich, WWF)…
Reviewed Aug 7, 2026
Read the full assessment →Best for
Where each agency measurably leads on the published data — team capacity, declared specializations, editorial scoring, and rates where both publish them. Use these to match an agency to your project priorities.
Choose Artefact if you need
- larger team capacity for multi-stream or enterprise-scale programs
- disclosed specialization in E-commerce
- broader service offering — also covers AI Automation and AI Agents
Choose Unit8 if you need
- closer collaboration at a smaller team scale
- disclosed specialization in Healthcare
- broader service offering — also covers Generative AI
Strengths and watch-outs
Both upsides and risks, straight from our editorial assessments.
Artefact
Strengths
- Agentic AI evidenced at adoption scale rather than pilot scale: 500 employees, then more than 1,500 agents emerging from the business itself
- Outcome figures published on the cases that carry them—two minutes for a market study, 15 points of revenue-prediction accuracy, seventy airports
- Over a hundred client pages published, so a buyer can find work in their own sector rather than accepting an analogue
Watch-outs
- 2,500 people across thirty-two offices—confirm which office delivers, who is named on the team, and how much is subcontracted
- Many of the published cases carry no numbers at all; the strong ones are strong, but the portfolio is uneven on outcomes
Unit8
Strengths
- Over 250 delivered data and AI projects and 150+ staff with prior experience at Apple, Amazon, Google and Palantir
- Certified partner across Palantir, OpenAI, NVIDIA, AWS, Snowflake, Databricks and Dataiku—platform choice is unlikely to be constrained by one vendor relationship
- Named fastest-growing Swiss company by the Financial Times in 2022, with Sagard NewGen backing the current phase
Watch-outs
- Ask which engagements ran outside Foundry if you do not intend to adopt it
- Most case studies describe the client by sector rather than by name—request a speakable reference in yours
- The Zurich presence is an office; the head office and registered entity are in Lausanne
Service coverage
Where the two overlap, and where each covers ground the other does not.
Industry coverage
Where the two overlap, and where each covers ground the other does not.
Frequently asked questions
- Which has more FinTech experience, Artefact or Unit8?
- Both agencies show documented FinTech work and have similar industry breadth. Compare directly on the agency profiles: Artefact and Unit8.
- Which scores higher overall, Artefact or Unit8?
- Both score equally well overall (74.8/100). The deciding factor is specialization — see the editorial quotes and Strengths sections above. Full methodology.
- When should I consider both Artefact and Unit8?
- Consider running parallel discovery briefs with Artefact and Unit8 if your project spans multiple workstreams, you want competitive proposals to compare scope and approach, or you're undecided between the specialization angles each brings (see the Best for cards above). Most engagements ultimately go with one — but the parallel-brief phase is a low-cost way to validate fit.
Read the full reviews
A side-by-side is a starting point. The full assessments carry the portfolio analysis, documented engagements, and the evidence behind every strength and watch-out above.