Where does the CAIO report?
If the answer is “somewhere in IT,” the yes is already soft.
The reporting line to the CEO is seat design.
It is the path for the contested AI yes and the stop.
Christian Pobbig and Beyond Chiefs work from Hamburg on AI Executive Search in DACH. This page builds the operating line CAIO→CEO. It does not clone the Vorstand↔Aufsichtsrat reporting hub — it aligns it in one line.
Reporting line means: who hears the yes, who owns the stop, who escalates without theatre.
Dotted lines to CTO or CIO without a CEO path often hide an unsigned yes.
Moving boxes does not fix that.
The line is a field in the brief — not a footnote on a slide.
Boards need their own upward reporting contract to the supervisory layer.
That is a different spoke.
Here the product is the CAIO seat’s operating line to the CEO.
One-line align is enough. Spine and H1 stay separate.
Mix both hub spines and you dilute both products.
No invented CAIO reporting duty by title.
No AI-officer statute essay.
No substitute for supervisory-board law.
Only seat design: where the contested yes runs when it burns.
Write the line into the brief.
Tell candidates who hears the yes.
Otherwise you buy a title without an escalation path — and discover silent blocks later.
If the line is real, retain the AI Executive Search mandate with CAIO→CEO as a seat field.
If you are only rearranging boxes, you are not searching yet.
Not as dogma. As a design question: does the contested yes sit there?
Only if stop and yes can land with the CEO when it matters.
No. Operating seat→CEO line. The AR hub stays its own spoke.
