A hot potato: Artificial intelligence is a hot topic with its fair share of controversy and division. Some in the IT industry view it as a threat, rooting for the hype bubble to burst. At the other end of the argument are automation-focused consulting companies trying to turn algorithms into digital “agents” to conduct consulting work with just a few prompts.
Accenture and Nvidia have announced they are expanding their AI partnership, aiming to promote (and possibly sell) machine learning algorithms to a growing number of enterprise organizations. The renewed effort includes developing a business group at Accenture (Nvidia Business Group), with tens of thousands of trained professionals and autonomous agents ready to deploy in large-scale operations.
The core element of Accenture’s AI initiative consists of “agentic AI systems,” which the Fortune 500 consulting company says are the next big thing in generative AI tech. Agentic AI systems can act on behalf of a user’s intent, creating brand-new workflows or taking appropriate actions to recreate entire processes or functions.
Accenture said its customers are already deploying agentic AI systems, but they will now get much better support thanks to over 30,000 new (human) professionals at the company. This AI-promoting army will help Accenture clients quickly adopt the agentic AI paradigm built on a platform known as AI Refinery.
This AI Refinery uses the full Nvidia AI stack, including Nvidia AI Foundry, Nvidia AI Enterprise, and Nvidia AI Omniverse. Accenture claims these technologies provide significant advancements in process reinvention, simulation, and “sovereign AI.” The newly formed Nvidia Business Group should help enterprise organizations doing business with Accenture hasten their adoption of generative AI services.
Accenture AI Refinery will promote AI adoption and be available as a public and private cloud offering on different ecosystems. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet shared her thoughts on AI Refinery, stating that the technology will create new opportunities, discover new ways of working, and scale AI solutions across an enterprise organization.
Accenture will also introduce a network of engineering hubs that can fine-tune foundational models, with 57,000 “AI practitioners” serving in Europe, Asia, and North America. The engineering hubs will likely be crucial in persuading third-party companies to sacrifice their future business prospects to the AI altar. Accenture based the centers on work it already did on existing hubs in Mountain View and Bangalore.
