In January 2020, KPMG executives gathered in Orlando for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Lakehouse, a sprawling, state-of-the-art studying and innovation middle designed to be the agency’s cultural residence. Simply two months later, the world shuttered beneath the burden of a worldwide pandemic.
Whereas the timing appeared catastrophic—and lots of companions grumbled about the way it was certainly popping out of their compensation—the $450 million funding reworked into what management now describes as a strategic “accelerant” for the agency’s most formidable pivot ever: the AI revolution. At this time, Lakehouse is among the agency’s main hubs for coaching a brand new technology of pros to navigate a world the place generative AI is now not a peripheral instrument however a core element {of professional} service.
Fortune was invited to sit down in on a three-day session with 600 winter interns, chosen from a pool of 9,000 candidates, representing 146 colleges, because the waves of expertise from New Jersey to Utah to Texas celebrated leaving faculty by primarily going again to class once more. Lakehouse had bits of aptitude situated all through, such because the KPMG-branded “GEN AI Invaders” arcade sport, however the giant, trendy constructing seems like a mix of a state-of-the-art lodge, a KPMG workplace constructing and a studying middle.
The Immersive Cultural Residence
Lakehouse has 800 single-occupancy visitor rooms (staffed by long-term companion Hyatt) and customary areas on every ground, full with a completely packed fridge. Lakehouse boasts high-end eating facilities, together with the Widespread Floor grab-and-go espresso store, a wine bar referred to as Mix, a sports activities bar often known as The Touchdown and a market-style meals corridor referred to as The Change, the place you have got coiches together with shawarma, pizza, salads and extra. (It even options an organization historical past part, together with a 1932 version of Fortune, profiling the recent new sector often known as accounting.)
It’s a far cry from the accounting, auditing and consulting agency—identified for its royal-blue shade scheme and its standing as one of many “Big 4” in company accounting, together with PwC, EY and Deloitte—and its gleaming new headquarters in New York Metropolis, as toured by Fortune‘s Eva Roytburg in November. The firm’s new Chair and CEO, Timothy Walsh, who started his five-year time period in July 2025, spoke to Fortune in October in regards to the worry “that honestly keeps me up at night,” round cyber and quantum evolving sooner than KPMG and its purchasers can maintain forward of.
Beneath Walsh, KPMG has consolidated three legacy Manhattan workplaces—345 Park Avenue, 560 Lexington Avenue, and 1350 Avenue of the Americas—right into a 450,000-square-foot area that features “war-mapping” technique rooms, skyline lounges, and even what one government referred to as “MTV-style” confession rooms for purchasers to document reflections after huge tasks. “I really do believe that someone can start here as an intern, like I did, and build a long-term career,” he instructed Fortune in November. And whereas the Manhattan headquarters provide one kind of point of interest for KPMG’s 90-plus workplaces and greater than 36,000 staff and companions, Lakehouse is the place interns begin their journey.
The campus additionally encourages bodily exercise by way of a (lately up to date) sports activities complicated referred to as Lakeside Park, that includes basketball, seashore volleyball, bikes, 1.2 miles of strolling trails, pickleball and an 18-hole miniature golf course, modeled on the precise PGA tour. Patrick Ryan, Nationwide Managing Companion of Advisory, Technique & Markets, instructed Fortune at Lakehouse that, in comparison with the agency he joined a long time in the past, you may really feel how totally different KPMG is now—actually. He recalled a pickup basketball sport at Lakehouse a couple of months beforehand. “There were a couple hard fouls, like really hard fouls going on,” Ryan instructed Fortune. “I wasn’t giving them. It was a hard game.”
Nick Lichtenberg/Fortune
Ryan stated he heard afterward that a few of his group members had gone as much as the interns afterward and stated, “Hey, just so you know, that was a hard foul on the guy who runs the advisory business.” He stated that whereas he prevented getting dunked on, he undoubtedly took “some hard charges, we’ll just say that.” (Ryan really began his profession at KPMG and, in a comparatively uncommon transfer, departed earlier than boomeranging again in 2011 as a Companion in KPMG’s Deal Advisory and Technique Enterprise. He then turned Workplace Managing Companion of Washington, D.C. and chief of the Federal Enterprise in June 2024 earlier than adopting his present function in July 2025). “I think we’re a flatter organization than a lot of the big firms,” he stated. “Lots of reasons behind that, but I think we’ve done that pretty intentionally relative to our culture.”
Ryan recalled that he was on the ribbon slicing for Lakehouse in January 2020 and remembered the grumbling on the time: “Capital-intensive, middle of nowhere in Orlando … some people might think the worst timing. It turned out it was actually the perfect timing, because this was our safe haven for the middle of the pandemic.”
Ryan was one in every of a number of KPMGers who described how Lakehouse became the Large 4 agency’s model of the NBA bubble in close by Disney world, because it incrementally reopened to KPMG staff with security protocols in place, together with onsite testing and social distancing, for each indoor and out of doors occasions and gatherings. Then, as soon as reopening was beneath approach, in 2023, “we have clients here every single week in scale.”
Sherry Magee, a longtime Orlando resident who has labored at Lakehouse because it was a building website, drove this editor across the campus in a (fairly fast-moving) golf cart, emphasizing that the central Florida location was inside a two-hour flight for many of KPMG’s U.S. workforce.
Provided that KPMG has 2,400-plus companions, there’s typically not sufficient Lakehouse to go round. (KPMG stated it typically works with a number of companion lodges to accommodate bigger teams if vital.) As Magee wheeled across the sidewalks and man-made lakes of Orlando, she highlighted options such because the on-site beekeeper (4 colonies and 80,000 bees, by las depend) and falconer (to steer away the prospect of coyotes, snakes and alligators). She additionally highlighted the numerous methods KPMG is popping Lakehouse into an AI crash-course, even all the way down to AI-themed enjoying playing cards, out there at its aIQuad, its AI channel on a close-by TV and the library situated subsequent to The Mix that includes AI thought management books. (She wouldn’t let Fortune stroll away with a deck, however she did provide a present of AI-themed costume socks.)
‘Think, Prompt, Check’: The New AI Commonplace
Most of the KPMG interns that Fortune spoke to described an odd state of affairs the place the accounting courses they discovered even two years in the past had been out of date in a world the place AI would do a lot of the lifting for them. Bedecked in quarter-zips and khakis, the scholars had been studying finest practices on AI from instructors who had been writing the curriculum just about in actual time.
On the coronary heart of the present lesson plan is a framework wherein KPMG instructors coaching tax interns to “think, prompt, check,” or TPC. Holly Ricker, a director within the tax studying and improvement group, instructed Fortune that the framework had advanced in simply the final three months; it was “think first, prompt later,” however she and different instructors realized that they wanted to explicitly inform college students to verify issues. “We were telling everyone to think first and then prompt, but … just because you’re prompting, doesn’t mean you’re getting the right prompt.” She stated she’s happy with the early outcomes. “Everyone’s going around saying ‘TPC, remember the TPC.’ It’s really caught on.”
Justin Day, an intern primarily based out of the Salt Lake Metropolis workplace, defined that he was older than a lot of his fellow classmates, as he had completed up at Brigham Younger College after spending two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ethiopia and Kenya. When he acquired to varsity in 2022, he had invaluable real-world expertise and was poised to undertake AI from the very starting, he stated, as he began utilizing ChatGPT inside days of its launch. Day defined that he was an avid AI adopter as a result of it was useful for researching the historic accuracy of his artistic writing passion: fantasy novels, within the fashion of Brandon Sanderson. He stated he discovered from it even when it was unsuitable. “I think that was just part of the learning curve. Usually when it leads me astray, it’s more my fault, and I just didn’t know what I did wrong to prompt it to not give me the right answer.” Day might not have identified it, however he was already modeling “TPC.”
Ricker and different instructors defined that interns are being taught to make the most of AI in two distinct capacities: as a studying companion to fill information gaps in unfamiliar subjects, and as a thought companion to iterate and bounce concepts off, as soon as a foundational understanding is established. Ricker stated the Tax apply is utilizing a prompting framework referred to as C-A-R-T-S to tailor outputs for various audiences. It stands for Character/Position, Viewers, Request & Context, Kind of Output, Type & Tone. The Audit apply has an analogous acronym: C-R-E-A-T-E, which stands for Context, Position, Anticipated Consequence, Modify parameters, Tone, Analysis/Additional.
This shift is considerably altering the each day workflow, lowering the “middle to middle”—the automated, repetitive duties that beforehand consumed three-quarters of knowledgeable’s day. By automating these duties, KPMG intends for its staff to reallocate their time to important considering, judgment, and the human component of service.
KPMG’s AI technique is bolstered by deep technical partnerships with trade giants. The agency makes use of a Microsoft setting, integrating Copilot into Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Groups to streamline communication and presentation constructing. Companion Patrick Ryan highlighted the current launch of Google Gemini as a “market-leading” turning level. For instance, he highlighted the preparation work he has to do for exterior conferences with high executives, which includes going by way of outdated notes, PowerPoint displays and correspondence. He used to spend a “huge chunk” of his time on this, however with AI instruments, and Gemini specifically, he estimated that he minimize his prep time by as much as 75%. “There was just this moment of: everything just became easier, especially on the go-to market side of things,” Ryan instructed Fortune.
‘More about conceptual things than hard facts’
Okay-Linh Nguyen, an intern from Houston, Texas, instructed Fortune that she wasn’t a typical “Aggie” regardless of her darkish maroon Texas A&M polo shirt, selecting her research over soccer video games more often than not. Her mother and father had fled wartorn Southeast Asia to settle in Houston, she defined, and she or he was drawn to A&M’s Skilled Program in Accounting, or PPA, as a result of it permits college students to get each an undergraduate and grasp’s diploma in simply 5 years. Her father, a former PwC marketing consultant, now owns two companies within the Houston space, and her mom works alongside him.
Nguyen shared a number of occasions how excited she was to get began on her internship (particularly, she wished to notice that she’s a Monetary Due Diligence intern specializing in vitality (ENRCI: Vitality, Pure Sources, Chemical compounds, Infrastructure) at KPMG’s Houston workplace. On the identical time, Nguyen additionally stated she was frightened in regards to the influence of AI on her personal work and her technology’s job prospects. “It’s scary; the reliance on it is really scary.” In Nguyen’s opinion, she was fortunate to enter faculty barely earlier than the onset of ChatGPT, so she “built those fundamental skills to discern when it’s right and when it’s wrong.” She couldn’t clarify learn how to develop that sense of when the AI is likely to be hallucinating, however “You have to have an eye for it … You can’t teach that eye unless you — How do I say this? It’s one of those things where you have to experience it to appreciate it.”
Angela Chen, out of KPMG’s New York Metropolis workplace, instructed Fortune that her mother and father had been torn in regards to the lengthy hours she spent learning at Baruch Faculty, as a result of they wanted her assist operating their Chinese language restaurant within the Coney Island part of Brooklyn. Ultimately, although, her mom inspired the profession path, calling it a “golden spoon”—a profitable to earn a residing and discover independence.
With reference to AI, Chen was level-headed. “I use AI as a learning tool. I think it’s very helpful for me to work with it,” she stated, including that “of course” she understands it received’t at all times present good data, and also you at all times must “check” what it’s telling you. “Usually when I use AI, I just search for definitions and concepts … it’s more about conceptual things than hard facts.”
Chen wrote to Fortune through LinkedIn that her three-day crash course at Lakehouse had set her up for fulfillment: “It was great, I was filled with learning and food.”
