A company with an inhouse team of ML/AI workers is the best candidate for consulting because it already values ML/AI and has a substantial budget but limited capabilities (because existing staff doesn't know everything (and neither do you)). In addition, those organizations contain people in the industry with whom to network. Person A at company 1 used to work with Person B at company 2 and Person B has moved on to company 3.
Even more important the worst thing you can do is give yourself excuses to avoid the possibility of rejection. Your choices are either no work (unless there's a miracle) or facing the possibility of rejection.
Consulting is a long term business. Relationships matter. Nearly every potential client won't have work right now. The best clients already have consultants. Consulting is about digging up work more than it is about doing the work...you can always hire people less capable of digging up work for that.
A contemporary idea in sales is to maximize the number of rejections. Cold call for ten or twenty rejections a day. Not one success per month.
