Cognizant & Microsoft's new AI partnership sees the purchase of 25,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot seats

Cognizant is purchasing over 25,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot seats for its associates, about 500 Sales Copilot seats, and 500 Services Copilot seats to enhance overall productivity and streamline workflows, according to a new announcement made by the Redmond-based tech giant.

Aside from this, the companies will work together to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to a million users within their global 2000 clients and across 11 industries, says the announcement.

Cognizant has already trained 35,000 developers on GitHub Copilot, and 40,000 more are currently under training, so the company is no stranger to AI technologies.

The partnership will also see Cognizant providing $1 billion to the advancements of AI tech over the next three years.

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. 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

The AI partnership between Microsoft and Cognizant started a few months ago when the two companies announced the new Advanced AI Lab, a place designed to create, test, and release new Generative AI to the market.

With the new announcement, however, is clear that the companies want to impose a trend on the market: motivating the corporate world to adopt AI. While Artificial Intelligence has been around for a while, it’s not exactly following a clear road to mass adoption.

According to our most recent survey, only 10% of users who have access to Copilot, actually use it for professional tasks. To encourage them to give it a try, the Redmond-based tech giant will introduce the Copilot Adoption Community in the Microsoft 365 productivity platform, which gives employees all the necessary tools to learn how to use AI.

However, the partnership between Cognizant and Microsoft might encourage other companies to do the same: after all, Cognizant is training its employees to learn how to use AI, and it could set a standard in the industry.

We’ll have to wait and see. But what’s your opinion on this? Should employees use AI at work?