Dive Brief:
- Accenture is deepening relationships with Microsoft and Databricks, two long-time technology partners, to ease AI adoption for enterprises. A day before its Q2 2026 earnings, Accenture announced plans to launch a forward deployed engineering practice with Microsoft. Separately, it’s launching the Accenture Databricks Business Group to build AI agent-ready databases.
- The expanded partnerships aim to bring AI expertise to customers. With Microsoft, Accenture is capitalizing on a growing trend of embedding AI-skilled engineers into an organization to help build customized tools. The FDE model drives value from “going in and solving problems that haven’t been solved,” Accenture Chair and CEO Julie Sweet said during the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call Thursday.
- “You have to have deep domain knowledge from the clients, the technology knowledge and then what we bring to the table,” Sweet said. “The experience, the integration, the industry and functional knowledge, and you work in teams to solve new problems.”
Dive Insight:
Accenture is making targeted moves to deploy AI expertise and enable companies to scale the technology across operations.
Through the FDE model, Accenture and Microsoft will bring together AI-skilled engineers, blending Microsoft’s frontier capabilities and Accenture’s workflow experience to help businesses scale AI, according to Accenture. The companies will “work shoulder-to-shoulder” with customers to build out pilots and move projects into production.
“Enterprise AI succeeds when strategy and engineering operate as one,” Manish Sharma, chief strategy and services officer at Accenture, said in the Microsoft announcement. “This collaboration with Microsoft establishes a new model that puts engineers at the center of AI transformation — one that moves from ambition to measurable outcomes at enterprise scale.”
Accenture is also expanding its partnership with Databricks. Together, they’re standing up a business group to help customers deploy and scale Databricks products and services, including Agent Bricks to build AI agents on enterprise data and Genie to enable employee engagement with data. The new business group will be supported by more than 25,000 Databricks professionals, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The IT consultancy is also looking to embed AI expertise into its own company. On Wednesday, Accenture completed its acquisition of Faculty, a U.K.-based AI company, and promoted Faculty CEO and co-founder Marc Warner to CTO of Accenture. The acquisition adds data scientists, AI engineers and other AI professionals to Accenture’s employee base. Warner will be responsible for leading Accenture’s technology strategy and execution, according to an announcement.
Both the acquisition and its pursuit of an FDE model with Microsoft build on Accenture’s push to close AI talent shortage gaps affecting enterprise customers. The company underwent an organizational change last year as part of its efforts.
It also expanded its in-house AI talent pool, now employing more than 85,000 AI and data professionals, exceeding the company’s goal of 80,000 by the end of 2026, Sweet told investors on Thursday. “We will hire more entry-level reinventors in FY '26 than FY '25, which is important for our financial model,” she added. “Just as our clients must reinvent, so must Accenture.”
The IT consultancy reported $18 billion in revenues for its Q2 2026, an 8% year-over-year increase. The company also saw $22.1 billion in new consulting and managed services bookings, a 6% year-over-year increase.
