M+E Daily

Cognizant is seeing increased customer demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) services, especially its generative AI (Gen AI) offerings, Ravi Kumar, Cognizant CEO, told analysts on May 1, during an earnings call for Cognizant’s first quarter (ended March 31).

That growing demand already convinced Cognizant to invest about $1 billion in its Gen AI capabilities over the next three years, focusing on areas including platform modernization, infrastructure, recruiting and upskilling, he told analysts Nov. 1 on an earnings call for Cognizant’s third quarter (ended Sept. 30).

That $1 billion includes Cognizant’s collaboration with Microsoft to “infuse Gen AI into healthcare administration,” he said on the May 1 call, which was also webcast.

“We see several themes that we believe are helping drive demand for our services,” he said. “These include clients’ continued investments in developing a modern technology infrastructure related to AI, cloud and digital technologies, data engineering, prioritization of hyper-personalization and customer experience projects and the need to deliver innovation.”

Earlier in the week, Cognizant signed a strategic agreement with Telstra, an Australia-based telecom and technology company, to “elevate their software engineering capabilities and enhance their customers’ experience,” he noted, calling that a “key strategic win” in Cognizant’s Asia-Pacific-Japan market.

“We will leverage our AI tools to drive innovation, enable more efficient software engineering and ID operations, and decommission legacy systems to improve operational efficiency, and support their employee experience by building them a superior engineering experience,” he went on to say.

Cognizant also extended its long-standing relationship with CNO Financial Group during the quarter. Under that expanded agreement, “we will implement cloud and digital technologies to help CNO deliver more personalized, digital and convenient solutions to the customers.”

The company will also “leverage Gen AI technologies to help drive efficiencies across infrastructure, applications, enterprise software and engineering services,” he said.

He went on to say: “Nowhere else is the demand for innovation higher than in Gen AI. To date, we have more than 450 early client engagements and more than 500 additional opportunities in the pipeline.”

Cognizant, he said, has seen “increased demand for AI services across four key areas: first, customer and employee experience, as clients seek to deliver improved interactions through hyper-personalization; second, content summarization and insights to empower decision-making; third, content generation; and finally, leveraging Gen AI to accelerate innovation and technology development cycles,” he said.

“These efforts are supported by a recently launched advanced artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco where we are investing instead of the art core AI research, aim to position us at the forefront of innovation in our industry. This builds upon our network of AI innovation studios” located in London, New York, San Francisco, Dallas and Bangalore.

The company’s advanced AI lab has “already produced 53 AI patents with applications for many more pending,” he also said.