Cognizant wants to run Claude AI for businesses, puts 25,000 employees on the job

Cognizant is betting big on Anthropic's Claude AI, with the IT services giant assigning more than 25,000 employees to help businesses use the AI tool in their daily operations. But the company is not stopping at helping clients adopt Claude. It also wants to run these AI systems for businesses after deployment, taking responsibility for their day-to-day operations.The company has set up a dedicated unit called the Claude Frontier Capability Group for this work. Its employees will help clients build AI-powered systems, upgrade existing software and bring AI agents into business operations. Cognizant is also rolling out a managed services offering under which it will operate Claude-based systems on behalf of companies. This means businesses will be able to hand over the technical work of running these AI systems to Cognizant instead of managing everything themselves. The service will include access to Claude, specialised employees and Cognizant's own AI technology. The company says it will also offer more predictable spending, along with security and governance controls suited to individual clients.Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S said the company is making a significant commitment to Anthropic's AI technology.“Clients want a partner who will take responsibility for delivery once AI is running inside their business,” Kumar said. “We are putting more than 25,000 of our people on Claude and taking on the job of running it for clients through managed services. That is a significant bet on Claude, and on what enterprises can achieve with it in their core operations.” The move comes as companies look to use AI beyond small-scale trials but often struggle to find the right talent to deploy and maintain these systems. Anthropic's Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith said the shortage of people with the skills to make AI work inside businesses has become a major challenge.“Every enterprise is racing to bring AI into its organization, but the people with the skills to make it work inside a real business have become the hardest talent to find,” Smith said.Cognizant claims Claude has cut business tasks from weeks to minutes Cognizant has shared a few examples of Claude being used in client operations. At a pharmaceutical manufacturing company, AI-powered agents developed by the IT firm helped reduce shop-floor downtime by 35 per cent. They also brought the time needed to troubleshoot problems down from 90–120 minutes to just 10–15 minutes.In another case, a media and entertainment company used Claude to automate the preparation of requirement data sheets. A task that earlier took three to four weeks was completed in around 15 minutes, according to Cognizant. The company also reported a 40–60 per cent improvement in the time taken to generate campaign briefs and provide retirement plan support for a North American insurance company.Cognizant's new AI unit will focus on four areas - redesigning business operations using AI, upgrading older software, deploying and managing AI agents securely, and using AI in software development. It will also use Claude-powered agents to analyse and modernise legacy and mainframe code.- Ends