{"id":131221,"date":"2026-01-25T12:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T12:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/131221\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T12:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T12:58:12","slug":"inside-kpmgs-orlando-lakehouse-the-450-million-covid-boondoggle-thats-becoming-a-secret-weapon-for-the-ai-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/131221\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside KPMG’s Orlando Lakehouse: the $450 million Covid boondoggle that’s becoming a secret weapon for the AI revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January 2020, KPMG<\/a> executives gathered in Orlando for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Lakehouse<\/a>, a sprawling, state-of-the-art learning and innovation center designed to be the firm\u2019s cultural home. Just two months later, the world shuttered under the weight of a global pandemic.<\/p>\n

While the timing appeared catastrophic\u2014and many partners grumbled about how it was surely coming out of their compensation\u2014the $450 million investment transformed into what leadership now describes as a strategic \u201caccelerant\u201d for the firm\u2019s most ambitious pivot ever: the AI revolution. Today, Lakehouse is one of the firm\u2019s major hubs for training a new generation of professionals to navigate a world where generative AI is no longer a peripheral tool but a core component of professional service.<\/p>\n

Fortune was invited to sit in on a three-day session with 600 winter interns, chosen from a pool of 9,000 applicants, representing 146 schools, as the waves of talent from New Jersey to Utah to Texas celebrated leaving school by essentially going back to class again. Lakehouse had bits of flair located throughout, such as the KPMG-branded \u201cGEN AI Invaders\u201d arcade game, but the large, modern building feels like a blend of a state-of-the-art hotel, a KPMG office building and a learning center. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Immersive Cultural Home<\/p>\n

Lakehouse has 800 single-occupancy guest rooms (staffed by long-term partner Hyatt) and common areas on each floor, complete with a fully packed fridge. Lakehouse boasts high-end dining amenities, including the Common Ground grab-and-go coffee shop, a wine bar called Blend, a sports bar known as The Landing and a market-style food hall called The Exchange, where you have coiches including shawarma, pizza, salads and more. (It even features a company history section, including a 1932 edition of Fortune, profiling the hot new sector known as accounting.) <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a far cry from the accounting, auditing and consulting firm\u2014known for its royal-blue color scheme and its status as one of the \u201cBig 4\u201d in corporate accounting<\/a>, along with PwC, EY<\/a> and Deloitte\u2014and its gleaming new headquarters in New York City, as toured by Fortune\u2018s Eva Roytburg<\/a> in November. The firm\u2019s new Chair and CEO, Timothy Walsh, who began his five-year term in July 2025, spoke to Fortune in October<\/a> about the fear \u201cthat honestly keeps me up at night,\u201d around cyber and quantum evolving faster than KPMG and its clients can keep ahead of. <\/p>\n

Under Walsh, KPMG has consolidated three legacy Manhattan offices\u2014345 Park Avenue, 560 Lexington Avenue, and 1350 Avenue of the Americas\u2014into a 450,000-square-foot space that includes \u201cwar-mapping\u201d strategy rooms, skyline lounges, and even what one executive called \u201cMTV-style\u201d confession rooms for clients to record reflections after big projects. \u201cI really do believe that someone can start here as an intern, like I did, and build a long-term career,\u201d he told Fortune in November. And while the Manhattan headquarters offer one type of focal point for KPMG\u2019s 90-plus offices and more than 36,000<\/a> employees and partners, Lakehouse is where interns start their journey.<\/p>\n

The campus also encourages physical activity through a (recently updated) sports complex called Lakeside Park, featuring basketball, beach volleyball, bikes, 1.2 miles of walking trails, pickleball and an 18-hole miniature golf course, modeled on the actual PGA tour. Patrick Ryan, National Managing Partner of Advisory, Strategy & Markets, told Fortune at Lakehouse that, compared to the firm he joined decades ago, you can feel how different KPMG is now\u2014literally. He recalled a pickup basketball game at Lakehouse a few months previously. \u201cThere were a couple hard fouls, like really hard fouls going on,\u201d Ryan told Fortune. \u201cI wasn\u2019t giving them. It was a hard game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"pickleball\"The new pickleball courts at the KPMG Lakehouse.<\/p>\n

Nick Lichtenberg\/Fortune<\/p>\n

Ryan said he heard afterward that some of his team members had gone up to the interns afterward and said, \u201cHey, just so you know, that was a hard foul on the guy who runs the advisory business.\u201d He said that while he avoided getting dunked on, he definitely took \u201csome hard charges, we\u2019ll just say that.\u201d (Ryan actually started his career at KPMG and, in a relatively rare move, departed before boomeranging back in 2011 as a Partner in KPMG\u2019s Deal Advisory and Strategy Business. He then became Office Managing Partner of Washington, D.C. and leader of the Federal Business in June 2024 before adopting his current role in July 2025). \u201cI think we\u2019re a flatter organization than a lot of the big firms,\u201d he said. \u201cLots of reasons behind that, but I think we\u2019ve done that pretty intentionally relative to our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan recalled that he was at the ribbon cutting for Lakehouse in January 2020 and remembered the grumbling at the time: \u201cCapital-intensive, middle of nowhere in Orlando \u2026 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ryan was one of several KPMGers who described how Lakehouse turned into the Big 4 firm\u2019s version of the NBA bubble in nearby Disney<\/a> world, as it incrementally reopened to KPMG employees with safety protocols in place, including onsite testing and social distancing, for both indoor and outdoor events and gatherings. Then, once reopening was under way, in 2023, \u201cwe have clients here every single week in scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherry Magee, a longtime Orlando resident who has worked at Lakehouse since it was a construction site, drove this editor around the campus in a (quite fast-moving) golf cart, emphasizing that the central Florida location was within a two-hour flight for most of KPMG\u2019s U.S. workforce.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Given that KPMG has 2,400-plus partners, there\u2019s sometimes not enough Lakehouse to go around. (KPMG said it sometimes works with several partner hotels to accommodate larger groups if necessary.) As Magee wheeled around the sidewalks and man-made lakes of Orlando, she highlighted features such as the on-site beekeeper (four colonies and 80,000 bees, by las count) and falconer (to steer away the prospect of coyotes, snakes and alligators). She also highlighted the many ways KPMG is turning Lakehouse into an AI crash-course, even down to AI-themed playing cards, available at its aIQuad, its AI channel on a nearby TV and the library located next to The Blend featuring AI thought leadership books. (She wouldn\u2019t let Fortune walk away with a deck, but she did offer a gift of AI-themed dress socks.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Think, Prompt, Check\u2019: The New AI Standard<\/p>\n

Many of the KPMG interns that Fortune spoke to described a strange situation where the accounting classes they learned even two years ago were obsolete in a world where AI would do much of the lifting for them. Bedecked in quarter-zips and khakis, the students were learning best practices on AI from instructors who were writing the curriculum virtually in real time.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the current lesson plan is a framework in which KPMG instructors training tax interns to \u201cthink, prompt, check,\u201d or TPC. Holly Ricker<\/a>, a director in the tax learning and development group, told Fortune that the framework had evolved in just the last three months; it used to be \u201cthink first, prompt later,\u201d but she and other instructors realized that they needed to explicitly tell students to check things. \u201cWe were telling everyone to think first and then prompt, but \u2026 just because you\u2019re prompting, doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re getting the right prompt.\u201d She said she\u2019s pleased with the early results. \u201cEveryone\u2019s going around saying \u2018TPC, remember the TPC.\u2019 It\u2019s really caught on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Justin Day<\/a>, an intern based out of the Salt Lake City office, explained that he was older than many of his fellow classmates, as he had finished up at Brigham Young University after spending two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ethiopia and Kenya. When he got to college in 2022, he had invaluable real-world experience and was poised to adopt AI from the very beginning, he said, as he started using ChatGPT within days of its release. Day explained that he was an avid AI adopter because it was helpful for researching the historical accuracy of his creative writing hobby: fantasy novels, in the style of Brandon Sanderson. He said he learned from it even when it was wrong. \u201cI think that was just part of the learning curve. Usually when it leads me astray, it\u2019s more my fault, and I just didn\u2019t know what I did wrong to prompt it to not give me the right answer.\u201d Day may not have known it, but he was already modeling \u201cTPC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ricker and other instructors explained that interns are being taught to utilize AI in two distinct capacities: as a learning partner to fill knowledge gaps in unfamiliar topics, and as a thought partner to iterate and bounce ideas off, once a foundational understanding is established. Ricker said the Tax practice is using a prompting framework called C-A-R-T-S to tailor outputs for different audiences. It stands for Character\/Role, Audience, Request & Context, Type of Output, Style & Tone. The Audit practice has a similar acronym: C-R-E-A-T-E, which stands for Context, Role, Expected Outcome, Adjust parameters, Tone, Evaluation\/Extra.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This shift is significantly altering the daily workflow, reducing the \u201cmiddle to middle\u201d\u2014the automated, repetitive tasks that previously consumed three-quarters of a professional\u2019s day. By automating these tasks, KPMG intends for its employees to reallocate their time to critical thinking, judgment, and the human element of service. <\/p>\n

KPMG\u2019s AI strategy is bolstered by deep technical partnerships with industry giants. The firm utilizes a Microsoft<\/a> environment, integrating Copilot into Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Teams to streamline communication and presentation building. Partner Patrick Ryan highlighted the recent release of Google<\/a> Gemini as a \u201cmarket-leading\u201d turning point. For example, he highlighted the preparation work he has to do for external meetings with top executives, which involves going through old notes, PowerPoint presentations and correspondence. He used to spend a \u201chuge chunk\u201d of his time on this, but with AI tools, and Gemini in particular, he estimated that he cut his prep time by up to 75%. \u201cThere was just this moment of: everything just became easier, especially on the go-to market side of things,\u201d Ryan told Fortune.<\/p>\n

\u2018More about conceptual things than hard facts\u2019<\/p>\n

K-Linh Nguyen<\/a>, an intern from Houston, Texas, told Fortune that she wasn\u2019t a typical \u201cAggie\u201d despite her dark maroon Texas A&M polo shirt, choosing her studies over football games most of the time. Her parents had fled wartorn Southeast Asia to settle in Houston, she explained, and she was drawn to A&M\u2019s Professional Program in Accounting<\/a>, or PPA, because it allows students to get both an undergraduate and master\u2019s degree in just five years. Her father, a former PwC consultant, now owns two businesses in the Houston area, and her mother works alongside him. <\/p>\n

Nguyen shared several times how excited she was to get started on her internship (specifically, she wanted to note that she\u2019s a Financial Due Diligence intern specializing in energy (ENRCI: Energy, Natural Resources, Chemicals, Infrastructure) at KPMG\u2019s Houston office. At the same time, Nguyen also said she was worried about the impact of AI on her own work and her generation\u2019s job prospects. \u201cIt\u2019s scary; the reliance on it is really scary.\u201d In Nguyen\u2019s opinion, she was lucky to enter school slightly before the onset of ChatGPT, so she \u201cbuilt those fundamental skills to discern when it\u2019s right and when it\u2019s wrong.\u201d She couldn\u2019t explain how to develop that sense of when the AI might be hallucinating, but \u201cYou have to have an eye for it \u2026 You can\u2019t teach that eye unless you \u2014 How do I say this? It\u2019s one of those things where you have to experience it to appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angela Chen<\/a>, out of KPMG\u2019s New York City office, told Fortune that her parents were torn about the long hours she spent studying at Baruch College, because they needed her help running their Chinese restaurant in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. Eventually, though, her mother encouraged the career path, calling it a \u201cgolden spoon\u201d\u2014a lucrative to earn a living and find independence. <\/p>\n

On the subject of AI, Chen was level-headed. \u201cI use AI as a learning tool. I think it\u2019s very helpful for me to work with it,\u201d she said, adding that \u201cof course\u201d she understands it won\u2019t always provide perfect information, and you always need to \u201ccheck\u201d what it\u2019s telling you. \u201cUsually when I use AI, I just search for definitions and concepts \u2026 it\u2019s more about conceptual things than hard facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chen wrote to Fortune via LinkedIn<\/a> that her three-day crash course at Lakehouse had set her up for success: \u201cIt was great, I was filled with learning and food.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In January 2020, KPMG executives gathered in Orlando for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Lakehouse, a sprawling, state-of-the-art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64587,1209,28,64588,64589,139,141,140,6343],"class_list":{"0":"post-131221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-consulting","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-kpmg","12":"tag-office-culture","13":"tag-orlando","14":"tag-orlando-headlines","15":"tag-orlando-news","16":"tag-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}