Transfer includes source code, full documentation, architecture diagrams, knowledge transfer, and 90 days of transition support. Everything you need to run the workers yourself.

One thing to understand clearly: the work does not disappear when you take ownership. Monitoring, upgrades, bug fixes, model updates, QA, compliance. That's the 7-person team's job today. After transfer, it's yours. The transfer option exists so that companies ready to build that capability in-house can do so at the right time, with full transparency about what they're taking on.

Clearview chose not to transfer at month 36. The CFO's reasoning: "The transfer cost at month 36 is $15,634. At month 42 it's free. More importantly, I looked at the team table and realized I'd need to hire at least three of those roles to maintain what we have. The service-only rate of $4,894 per month after payoff is less than one junior developer's salary. The math made the decision for me."

What Clearview Has at Month Thirty-Six

Three AI workers. Thirty-six months. Client onboarding that used to take 5 hours per client, handled end-to-end. Tax documents extracted and routed at volume. Aged receivables collected before they became write-offs. Unsigned engagement letters chased automatically. Missing tax documents flagged before deadlines.

The people who used to do this work are still at Clearview. Maria focuses on client relationships and judgment calls. James reviews the 12% of documents that need human eyes. Rachel handles the conversations that come back from the AI's follow-ups. They're doing the work that was underneath the paper processing: the judgment calls, the client relationships, the pattern recognition that no model can replicate.

And every new worker Clearview adds to the portfolio onboards faster, costs less to stand up, and benefits from the Company Brain that all three workers have been building together. That's the compounding effect. Not just within one worker's trajectory, but across the entire workforce.

The CFO's Thirty-Six Month Reflection

"I spent two weeks comparing the sticker prices and almost chose Cash Purchase. It looked $183,000 cheaper. That felt like the responsible decision. Then I modeled what happens after go-live. The bug fixes across three workers. The model upgrades you can't skip. The enhancements you'll inevitably need, times three. We don't have an ML engineer. We don't have a QA team for AI. The Cash Purchase costs are unknowable at purchase time. The Builder-Financed costs were on a spreadsheet before I signed."

"I stopped comparing it to a software purchase. I started comparing it to a mortgage. Every month I'm building equity toward owning these workers outright. At month 42, the principal is paid off, my monthly drops 35%, and I own everything. If I want to bring it in-house at that point, I can, for free. If the service is still worth it at $4,894 a month, I keep it. Three employees who ramp from entry-level to senior in a year, never quit, and come with a PhD team I don't have to recruit. At that point, the monthly payment felt like payroll. And it was payroll I could cancel any time."

Composite based on CFO conversations across Builder-Financed engagements

The numbers told one story at month zero and a different story at month thirty-six. The sticker price said Cash Purchase was cheaper by $183,000. The actual experience said the gap was $34,781, for a workforce with predictable accuracy, current AI models, and a team Clearview never had to recruit.

Neither path is wrong. Cash Purchase is the right choice for companies with the internal capability to manage AI workers long-term. Builder-Financed is the right choice for companies that want the outcome without building that team. The numbers and the team table make it clear which kind of company you are. The decision emerges from there.

That's the case study. Thirty-six months of what actually happens when two paths lead to the same destination, and the route you choose depends on what you already have in-house.