Clarinet

Clarinet: Human-First AI Adoption for Mid-Market Companies

Clarinet is an AI adoption and transformation firm that helps small and mid-sized organizations put AI to work in ways that actually stick, combining AI expertise with behavioral science and change management rather than treating adoption as a pure technology rollout. The company launched under the name ApplyAI and rebranded to Clarinet, a name the founders say reflects their approach: tools like AI work best when people, process, and technology play in concert, the way instruments do in an ensemble (Clarinet, 2026). Clarinet says it partnered with more than 40 companies in the six months before its rebrand (Clarinet, 2026). The team is led by co-founders including Dhruv Singh, a four-time founder with McKinsey experience, and Diane Sadowski-Joseph, who focuses on product and brings two decades in corporate learning and development. The broader team includes alumni of Mistral AI, Stripe, Meta, and McKinsey.

What Clarinet does

Clarinet runs AI adoption programs for leadership teams and their organizations: workshops and cohort-based training on prompting and AI-assisted workflows, custom programs built around what Clarinet calls "reflexive AI usage," and diagnostic tools (including a public "FIRE" assessment) that help leaders figure out where AI fits in their operations before they scale it. The company has published case studies describing measurable productivity gains from these programs, including a claimed 89 percent of employees at one insurance client reporting productivity gains after a Clarinet engagement (Clarinet, 2026, citing the company's own case study; this is Clarinet's reported figure, not independently verified). Programs are delivered through a mix of live facilitation, self-serve learning content, and ongoing advisory support as organizations scale their AI use.

Where it fits

Clarinet says it works primarily with small and mid-size organizations across professional services, tech, healthcare, finance, legal, and consulting, spanning teams just getting started with AI through those ready to scale it organization-wide (Clarinet, 2026). It's a fit for leadership teams that have an AI policy in place but haven't seen adoption or ROI follow, or that want a structured, people-centered path into AI rather than a scattershot rollout of individual tools.

Why this matters for people leaders

AI adoption has become a people problem as much as a technology one. Giving employees access to AI tools does not, on its own, change how people actually work, and many organizations are discovering that policies alone do not drive behavior change. For people leaders focused on Culture, Performance, and Retention, that gap matters: how an organization introduces AI, whether it builds real skill and confidence or just adds another tool nobody trusts, shapes whether AI becomes a source of leverage or a source of friction and anxiety on the team.

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