Cognizant France shares growth strategy and AI vision with analysts

Cognizant France organized an analyst and advisor breakfast last week. The agenda included an overview of Cognizant in France and where the company plays in AI, at the corporate level.

Several takeaways:

• Cognizant France describes itself as a scale-up and is in growth mode. The company has a client base in life science (i.e., pharma) and wants to expand in BFSI, primarily banking. Its primary target is CAC 40 firms, especially those with international operations
• It targets large deals and platform services (e.g., SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, and Microsoft), ideally combined in transformational opportunities
• The company wants to deploy Belcan’s ER&D capabilities for aerospace and defense (acquired in H2 2024 for ~1.3bn in cash, a significant investment). It opened this year a center in Toulouse. Cognizant offers embedded software, Industry 4.0, AI, and also outside of aeronautics: mobility
• Cognizant, at the corporate level, initiated in 2023 a 3-year $1bn investment. The company has several internal GenAI use cases for sales & marketing, and support functions (e.g., around RFP processing, HR and career planning, investor relations) and externally: QA/QE (synthetic test data generation), and vertically (underwriting for insurance; for U.S. medical appeal processing)
• Cognizant has also articulated its Agentic AI offerings, highlighting that Agentic AI goes beyond LLMs, and performs tasks (Single AI Agents). This is the beginning, but the company has Multi-Agent AI Systems in the back of its mind (coordination of several agents executing each a specific task). Cognizant points to significant potential cost savings (up to 40%), when it can automate a process/several tasks
• Cognizant also introduced its notion of Responsible AI, targeting regulatory compliance. The company points out that AI regulation is country-led and, in the case of the U.S., State-specific, making regulatory compliance significantly complicated
• Cognizant made the case that clients should look at Responsible AI beyond regulatory compliance and use regulation as an opportunity, (e.g., reduce AI-related reputational risks to widen its adoption). The company has formulated its Responsible AI into a methodology across the project lifecycle.