Cognizant and Microsoft Corp. have announced an expanded partnership that aims to make Microsoft’s generative AI, including its 365 Copilot tool, available to millions of users in a bid to transform enterprise operations, elevate employee experiences, and speed up innovation across industries.
The strategic expansion seeks to enable generative AI at scale, sparking impacts across a diverse range of sectors and significantly lifting productivity and customer experience. The $1 billion investment from both technology leaders has the potential to drive substantial economic growth and enhance the ambitious AI-driven contributions to global GDP growth forecasts.
The combination of Cognizant's industry experience and Microsoft's advanced generative AI will be pivotal in contributing to the projected $1 trillion that AI is expected to add to the U.S. GDP over the next decade. Additionally, this partnership will significantly expedite AI adoption and innovation in India, contributing to an estimated $450–$500 billion increase in India’s GDP by 2025.
Ravi Kumar S, CEO of Cognizant, commented on their ground-breaking partnership: “Generative AI can be a game-changer for virtually every business in every industry, opening up new possibilities for innovation, efficiency, and growth. 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. 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.”
Cognizant and Microsoft will collate efforts to deliver industry-specific solutions, using the Copilot Studio platform to develop custom industry-and-business-function specific Copilots, leveraging generative AI large language models, business applications, and enterprise data. These customised applications will focus on a range of industries, including healthcare, retail, and consumer goods, financial services, life sciences, and communications and media, among others.
A series of use cases currently under development provide insight into the potential benefits of these industry-focused collaborations. They include work with a media company to create an AI-based solution for the translation and localisation of video content using Microsoft technology. Another case sees work with an education services provider using generative AI to create and deliver personalised digital content aimed at providing improved services to teachers and students.
Committed to maintaining the highest standards for responsible and ethical AI, both Cognizant and Microsoft will ensure AI adoption is managed with an overall focus on safety, security, privacy, transparency, and inclusion. Learning programmes like Cognizant’s Synapse will be instrumental in preparing the modern workforce to adapt and grow in the evolving AI-centered enterprise ecosystem.