All companies

8th Light

Six positioning scores, 1 to 10.
See Methodology.

DimensionScore

AI-first

Headline 'WE SHIP AI.' and title tag 'We Ship AI'; agentic AI studio, agentic as primary hot-word, ai_emphasis 80, services led by Agentic AI, TL skews heavily to agentic/GenAI — AI is the entire pitch.

9Leading

Consultative partner

Combines product strategy, design, and engineering with outcomes framing ('real growth, not just more features', governance-built-in workflows in 8-12 weeks), positioning as transformation partner rather than staff-aug.

7Strong

Clear differentiator

Sharp, plain claims: 20 years in regulated/high-stakes environments, 'AI investment becomes AI infrastructure — not just a pilot', 'built to outlast any single model', employee-owned craft culture — specific and differentiated.

7Strong

Thought leadership

Prolific 850+ insights program, monthly cadence, named senior practitioner bylines (Head of Agentic AI), genuine POV pieces on agentic development, harness engineering, healthcare in AI era; podcasts and videos.

8Strong

Industry specialization

Two deep sectors (financial services, healthcare with Pfizer/GeneDx/GoodRx/Evolent) with named proof; retail moderate; several light sectors — strong in a couple but not broadly deep.

6Present

Technology-forward, owns IP

One owned asset, Agentic AI Studio (medium substantiveness), a branded time-boxed engagement model with named components but read as packaged service, not a software platform; AI-Ready Platforms mentioned as approach.

4Emerging

Size

51 to 200 people

Revenue

$10M to $50M(medium confidence)

HQ

Chicago, IL

AI emphasis

Normal

8thlight.com Chicago, IL (HQ), London, Los Angeles (Satellite), New York (Satellite), Austin (Satellite)

Homepage positioning

“WE SHIP AI.”

8th Light is a custom software development firm founded in 2006 that partners with ambitious organizations to build agentic AI solutions and adaptive platforms. They combine product strategy, experiential design, and engineering to deliver digital products for regulated and high-stakes industries. Headquartered in Chicago with 140+ team members, they serve clients across fintech, healthtech, marketplaces, and more.

Selling points

  • Agentic solutions and deep platform expertise
  • Validated innovation: experiments that earn their way to production
  • AI-Ready Platforms: modular, observable, API-first layer for agents
  • Production Autonomy: one workflow ships in 8–12 weeks with governance built in
  • Marketplace at Speed: real-time buyer trust for agent or human traffic
  • Over 20 years building systems for regulated, high-stakes environments

Named clients

  • Pfizer
  • GeneDx
  • Cars.com
  • Fidelity Life Association
  • Grubhub
  • Illinois Partnered Solutions
  • AXUS Travel
  • Capital One Services
  • American Family Mutual Insurance Company
  • American Medical Association
  • Avant
  • BeatStars
  • Cumberland DRW
  • Deloitte
  • Electronic Arts
  • Enova International
  • Evolent Health
  • Fandango
  • GoodRx
  • Home Connect
  • Hindman
  • IDEO
  • LegalZoom
  • Medline Industries
  • Munich Re - Digital Partners
  • PENN Entertainment
  • Riot Games
  • Rocket Auto
  • Ticketmaster
  • The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
  • 3STEP Sports
  • American Financial Exchange
  • Hypixel Studios
  • Mavenlink
  • Popcorn
  • Skribe.ai

Services and capabilities

AI and ML

Agentic AI — AI that acts like a trusted teammate.

Design and build agentic workflows that take action on behalf of the business, closing the loop with core systems. Combines LLMs, proprietary data, and proven guardrails for regulated industries. Stands up AI platforms so teams can safely ship and operate multiple agents.

8 to 12 weeks to ship one workflow in your environment

Cloud and platform

Platforms & Adaptive Systems — Enabling a living and resilient system.

Modernize legacy systems into a cohesive, API-first platform that supports the next decade of products. Design modular architectures and build secure cloud-native infrastructure that scales reliably across regions, brands, and business lines.

Advisory and strategy

Emerging Solutions — Prove the future in months, not years.

Stand up rapid and repeatable solution delivery processes that de-risk big bets in new markets. Run rapid discovery and prototyping cycles to validate what customers will actually use, then build it. Creates a clear roadmap from promising pilot to scaled, production-ready solution.

Advisory and strategy

Product Strategy — Point your roadmap at real growth, not just more features.

Turn scattered ideas into a crisp product strategy tied directly to revenue, retention, and risk. Run focused discovery workshops that align stakeholders and build living roadmaps and tech plans that keep product, data, and engineering aligned.

Design and experience

Experiential Design — Design experiences people don't have to think about — just use.

Pair research and human-centered design to uncover what users actually need. Craft intuitive, beautiful, accessible interfaces ready for real-world complexity, using experimentation and analytics to make every release measurably better.

Product engineering

Engineering & DevOps — Ship faster using AI, sleep better and scale further.

Build and modernize platforms, applications, and integrations that are secure, reliable, and built to grow. Automate testing, deployments, and infrastructure. Apply proven DevOps and reliability practices to hit ambitious uptime and performance targets with a leaner team.

Industries

Financial services

Deep focus

Serving fintechs, insurers, and financial institutions with compliant, scalable digital products.

Healthcare

Deep focus

HealthTech and life sciences clients including Pfizer, GeneDx, GoodRx, and Evolent Health.

Retail and consumer

Named focus

Marketplace engineering and AI-driven pricing intelligence for retail and consumer marketplaces.

Travel and hospitality

Mentioned

Digital products for travel clients including AXUS Travel.

Media and entertainment

Mentioned

Digital products for entertainment clients including Ticketmaster, Fandango, Electronic Arts, and Riot Games.

Education

Mentioned

Agentic recruiting platform for higher education; clients include APL nextED and Royal Academy of Arts.

Public sector

Mentioned

Nonprofit and civic clients including Illinois Partnered Solutions and Center for Policing Equity.

Thought leadership

Owned IP

Surfaced from what the firm names on its homepage and primary navigation, plus what a quick crawl turns up. Large firms may own more than is shown here.

Agentic AI Studio

Accelerator

A structured engagement offering through which 8th Light ships one production agentic workflow in a client's environment within 8–12 weeks, including boundaries, observability, and evaluation to prove the investment.

Our assessment: Branded engagement model with a defined time-box and named components (observability, evaluation, governance); more of a packaged service than a software asset.

View

Hot-words

The buzzword spaces this firm chooses to lean into.

Agentic

“Agentic solutions”

Outcomes

“AI investment becomes AI infrastructure”

Responsible AI

“proven guardrails to keep outputs secure in regulated industries”

Speed to value

“Prove the future in months, not years”

Data foundation

“modular, observable, API-first layer your agents need to run on”

Contact surface

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Clay Griffith

“We get to sit down, explore cool ideas and help people to see the value in their points of view. Especially in this AI-everywhere world, that human relationship-building is pretty special.”

Clay Griffith, Co-founderClay Griffith's signature

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