Cognizant and Microsoft forge AI partnership

Technology services and consulting company Cognizant has expanded its collaboration with Microsoft to help accelerate adoption of generative AI within the enterprise.

Under the expanded agreement, the two companies will work together with the goal of making Microsoft’s generative AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities available to millions of employees and enterprise customers.

As part of the partnership, Cognizant has purchased 25,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot seats for its associates, as well as 500 sales Copilot seats and 500 services Copilot seats. Cognizant will also work to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to a million users within its global 2000 client base.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant embedded into the Microsoft 365 suite designed to combine the power of a large language model with data within a user’s own Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps to deliver powerful capabilities.

The collaboration will also see Cognizant and Microsoft collaborate to deliver industry-specific solutions harnessing the power of AI using Copilot Studio. The partners will be targeting industries including health care, retail, financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, communications and media.

Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar said the company has already been embracing generative AI, with its Synapse skilling program having trained 35,000 developers on Github Copilot, and an additional 40,000 developers set to receive similar training.

“Generative AI can be a game changer for virtually every business in every industry, opening up new possibilities for innovation, efficiency and growth. That’s why we are investing $1 billion in generative AI over the next three years and leading the development of new research to explore its potential for our clients, their employees and end customers,” he said. “We’re committed to helping them harness the power of generative AI at scale, and Microsoft Copilot is a proven tool that can bring transformative gains, unlocking talent and potential in ways we can only imagine.”

The partnership will be supported by Cognizant’s recently announced Advanced AI Lab, as well as its network of AI Innovation Studios in London, New York, San Francisco, Dallas and Bengaluru.

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