Tenex review
Engineers in New York, paid per feature shipped, with mid-market firms as half the book.
Top 11 rank
#1 of 11
Score
8.1/9.4
Pricing
$$$ (no figure published; engineering sold as outcome based, subscription style squads, paid for features delivered rather than hours)
HQ
New York, NY
Verdict
Tenex wins this page because it sells the thing a stuck AI pilot needs: engineers who ship, priced on what ships. Its homepage says its engineering squads are outcome based and that you pay for features delivered, not hours logged, and it rules out six month strategy work and 200 slide decks in writing. A published interview with co-founder Alex Lieberman, who co-founded Morning Brew, puts the firm at about 75 people in New York City, about 90 percent of them engineers or AI strategists, and says half its customers are mid-market firms with $100 million to $500 million in revenue. The homepage lists Anthropic, OpenAI, Vercel, Lovable, LangChain and Braintrust as partners.
What customers praise
The pricing model is the most buyer friendly structure on this page: the risk of slow work sits with the firm, not with you. Its engineers are paid per story point delivered, by the same interview, so the incentive inside the firm matches the one you are buying. It is the only firm here whose stated buyer mix includes companies the size of most readers.
What customers criticise
No price, no named client and no street address on its own site, so almost everything a buyer would check comes from an interview rather than the firm's pages. The other half of its customers are Fortune 2000 companies, so a 40 person startup is below its stated fit. The firm is young: the interview says it started about 18 months earlier as an AI powered development shop. Ask for two references at your size before you sign.
Best for
A chief executive of a United States company doing roughly $100 million to $500 million in revenue who wants AI built into production by engineers in New York and wants to pay for features shipped, not hours logged.
At a glance
- Integrations: Anthropic, OpenAI, Vercel, Lovable, LangChain, Braintrust
- Regions served: US
Red flags
Public risk signals as of November 2026: low. Live firm. Outcome based pricing and the partner list read on tenex.co on 1 November 2026. Headcount, New York base and customer mix read in a published interview the same day; the firm's own site states none of them. No adverse public signals found. See the full red-flag report.
Alternatives
See alternatives to Tenex, or compare against the next-ranked entry: Tenex vs XRAY.
Where else this brand ranks
- Tenex vs XRAY vs Tribe AI: 11 Best AI Consulting Firms in New York (2026) — #1
- AI Implementation Companies: 11 Best for US Businesses, Priced and Ranked (2026) — #7
Source: Top 11 Tenex vs XRAY vs Tribe AI: 11 Best AI Consulting Firms in New York (2026), verified November 1, 2026 — no paid placement.