Company status
OpenAI implementation partner UK
1AYM is an OpenAI implementation partner in the UK and an OpenAI Select Partner. Company status and personal certifications are different things: Select Partner is a company status awarded after a partner agreement, a compliance review and a technical assessment, not a certification from OpenAI and not a partner claim with Anthropic; the two Claude credentials are personal, held by Tayyeb Mahmud, founder: Claude Certified Architect – Professional (23 July 2026) and Claude Certified Associate – Foundations (21 July 2026), both verifiable on Credly. We are model-selective in production across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and open-source. Two client environments run in daily production. Headquartered in Stoke-on-Trent, we deliver across the UK, the Gulf and the US.
The status
What is an OpenAI Select Partner
A company status in the OpenAI Partner Network, held by the practice rather than by any individual.
OpenAI Select Partner UK is a company status, awarded after a partner agreement, a compliance review and a technical assessment. It belongs to 1AYM. It is written that way on every surface of this site.
A partner status is not a certification, and it is not a sales agreement that decides which model we put in production. Model choice still comes from evidence on the workload in front of us.
The work
What an implementation partner should deliver.
A badge is not a system. The test is whether a real workflow is running in your environment, governed, measured and handed over.
Architecture
Target architecture, model and tool routing, access control and the operating model, written down so the reasoning outlives the engagement.
One real workflow
End to end, in your systems and against your data. A demonstration that skips the hard integration proves nothing.
Governance
Least-privilege access, audit logging, deterministic checks and human approval sized to the risk, built as controls rather than written as a policy.
Evaluation in CI
Regression suites that run when a prompt or a model changes, so a quality drop is caught before users find it.
Enablement
The people who will run it are in the work from the start, so the capability stays when the engagement ends.
Handover
Documentation, training and a written handover. The measure is what your team can maintain, change and build on once we have gone.
The same three stages as the rest of the practice, in this order. Each one ends with something written down and handed over.
Discover
Typically two to four weeks with your sponsor and the people who do the job today. We agree what the outcome is worth, what stands in the way, and how it will be judged.
You leave with a ranked list of what to build, the architecture for it, and an investment case with real numbers in it.Ship a working slice
One real workflow, end to end, in your systems and against your data. A demonstration that skips the hard integration proves nothing, so we do not build one.
You leave with working software in your environment, and evidence of what it does.Run it, governed
Access rules, approval gates, monitoring and training, then a staged rollout. Your team runs it. We measure adoption, cycle time and cost, so the change is reported rather than asserted.
You leave with a running system, a team that can maintain it, and numbers for the board.
Proof
Two environments, in daily production.
Every figure below is already published on this site, with its source. Nothing is added here.
A government-accredited EdTech in the Middle East
A whole-interview speaking assessment on OpenAI audio models with a Gemini fallback, on an estate whose database was replatformed onto Postgres in Google Cloud's Doha region (me-central1) to meet Gulf data-residency requirements.
Engagement file D-02
A PE-backed marketing agency
We lead the architecture of the enterprise AI platform underneath the agency's organisation-wide AI programme. That platform is featured in a published Anthropic customer case study: about 1,000 employees reached, around 400 employee-authored skills in the first four weeks, 91% adoption in North America.
Engagement file D-01
Model choice
Model-selective, in production.
The choice comes from what we run across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and open-source, not from a vendor deal. We are model-selective: the model is picked per workload rather than by loyalty.
In production today: OpenAI audio models for speech assessment with a Gemini fallback, Claude for enterprise platform and agent estates, Codex and Claude Code for engineering work. Where a model is a poor fit we will say so.
Data and law
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
We work to UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, plus whatever your sector adds, and we architect for data residency where a region is a requirement.
We hold no ISO or SOC certification, and we do not imply one.
How you buy
Five named engagements. No OpenAI-only SKU.
Implementation work is bought as one of the five engagements already on this site. There is no separate OpenAI product line, and no seat package. The status does not change what you can buy.
For C-suite and transformation leads
AI Opportunity & Feasibility Sprint
Find out which two or three workflows are worth building, what each is worth and what it would cost, before you commit a budget to any of them.
Executive AI discovery
For CIO, CTO, CDO, operations and finance
Enterprise AI Platform & Agentic Workflows
Turn scattered pilots into one governed place for AI to run, then put real workflows on it. Access rules, checks and human approval are built in, so the second workflow does not start from scratch the way the first one did.
Production AI systems
For engineering leaders
AI Engineering Transformation (Codex & Claude Code)
Your engineers are already using AI tools, with or without a policy. This puts review, guardrails and CI around that, so the code it writes reaches production the same way every other change does.
AI harness & platform engineering
For scale-ups and enterprises
Fractional AI Platform Architect
Senior architecture and delivery ownership without hiring a permanent AI platform leader. We hold the technical decisions, and the standard the work is judged against.
Fractional AI architect
For programmes that need senior capacity now
Embedded Engineers on Contract
A senior engineer, or a team, inside your programme on contract. You direct the work day to day, and we hold the standard every 1AYM engineer is hired against, plus the cover behind them.
Embedded engineers
The people
Who does the work.
Every 1AYM engineer is either certified on the platforms we build on, or has shipped inside a top-tier engineering organisation. The people who write the strategy write the code, and we scale the team to the contract.
The senior engineers a client meets first: a Principal Architect (10+ years; AI adoption, agent systems, Claude and OpenAI platform architecture; holds both Anthropic Claude certifications; in production at both client environments above); a Principal Engineer (14 years, London; data platform, context and memory architecture); a Principal Data Engineer (17 years, London; pipeline orchestration, CI/CD, data infrastructure).
1AYM delivers the work rather than any one person. Colleagues are named only with their permission, and you meet the engineers before you sign.
Meta, Spotify, Viasat/Inmarsat, Starling Bank, UBS, S&P Global, Sky and Société Générale are former employers of our engineers, not clients of 1AYM.
Before you sign
A buyer checklist.
Questions that separate an implementation partner from a seat reseller. Each one is answerable from this page or the file it links.
- 01
Can they show a system your people would depend on every working day, not a demonstration and not unused seats?
- 02
Is model choice a workload decision, with more than one provider already in production?
- 03
Will the first delivery be one real workflow in your systems, with architecture written down beside it?
- 04
Are access, audit, deterministic checks and human approval built as controls, and does evaluation run in CI?
- 05
Is enablement inside the engagement, with a written handover, so your team can run it afterwards?
- 06
Is the commercial shape one of the five named engagements, rather than an OpenAI-only package?
Questions
Before you book.
What does Select Partner status actually mean?
It is a company status in the OpenAI Partner Network, held by 1AYM rather than by any individual, and awarded after a partner agreement, a compliance review and a technical assessment. It is not a certification, and it does not decide which model we put in production.
Is a partner status the same as a certification?
No. A partner status is awarded to a company. A certification is issued to a person who has sat a proctored exam. We keep them apart. When both are stated in one breath the wording is OpenAI Select Partner and Claude certified, and never anything shorter.
Does 1AYM hold partner status with Anthropic?
No. 1AYM holds no partner status with Anthropic. The two Claude credentials are personal certifications issued to the founder on passing a proctored exam, and each one verifies on Credly.
Which models do you run in production?
Whichever the workload argues for, across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and open-source. In production today: OpenAI audio models for speech assessment with a Gemini fallback, Claude for enterprise platform and agent estates, Codex and Claude Code for engineering work.
How do we buy this? Is there an OpenAI-only package?
No. Implementation work is bought as one of the five named engagements already on the site: a feasibility sprint, an architecture and production build, an engineering enablement programme, a retained architect, or embedded engineers. There is no separate OpenAI product line.
Do you hold ISO or SOC certification?
No. We work to UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, plus whatever your sector adds, and we architect for data residency where a region is a requirement. We hold no ISO or SOC certification, and we do not imply one.
Bring one workflow.
Half an hour is enough to tell you whether we can help, what it would take, and whether a production system is the right buy. We will say plainly when the answer is that you do not need us.
Last reviewed · 1AYM