McKinsey, Accenture place bets on AI-driven businesses

“This acquisition will enable us to implement AI with fewer resources at significantly lower cost,” stated Alex Singla, a McKinsey senior partner and QuantumBlack global co-leader.

The purchase will allow Iguazio’s four co-founders – CEO Asaf Somekh, CTO Yaron Haviv, COO Yaron Segev and VP of Architecture Orit Nissan-Messing – to bring their extensive experience in enterprise analytics and AI to an even broader client base. All four have worked together since 2001 on their startups and across multiple organizations, developing some of the core technologies in AI.

McKinsey research says that AI investment has been rising since 2012. Yet, only 10% of projects have successfully been implemented. QuantumBlack, an AI by McKinsey, says it has been helping clients for over a decade to bring AI into their decision-making processes. However, they have yet to answer how organizations can best deploy and scale AI to reap its rewards.

By collaborating with Iguazio, QuantumBlack can provide our customers with sector-specific AI solutions that are five times more effective, eight times faster from concept to reality and twice as reliable, the companies say.

The Iguazio and QuantumBlack teams will integrate fully, creating a single product roadmap to combine the technology assets of both firms into one offering. The companies say that this unified approach will allow customers to integrate AI into real-time decision-making, helping them achieve sustainable and inclusive growth.

“We analyzed more than 1000 AI companies worldwide and identified Iguazio as the best fit to significantly accelerate our AI offering – from the initial concept to production, in a simplified, scalable and automated manner,” said Ben Ellencweig, a McKinsey senior partner.

Iguazio’s technology focuses on automating the data science process from end-to-end and providing users with a platform that enables them to quickly and easily scale their AI initiatives across the entire company. With minimal overhead, enterprise clients can generate real business value from AI.

Alex Sukharevsky, a senior partner at McKinsey and global leader of QuantumBlack, believes that this acquisition marks a new era of AI innovation. “The next phase of AI innovation is among us,” he said.

Forrester Research recently named McKinsey a “leader” among AI service providers.

Accenture Ventures invests in Cosmo Tech to expand digital twin simulation technology access

Accenture, a leading global professional services company, recently announced an investment in Cosmo Tech, a software company that designs digital twin simulation technology.

“Digital twin simulation technology brings a new way for organizations to understand and manage complex supply chain operations,” stated Michel Morvan, the co-founder and executive chairman of Cosmo Tech. “We look forward to working with Accenture Ventures to empower organizations to become agile drivers of change and to lead with confidence.”

The investment is part of Accenture Venture’s Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program that targets emerging technology software companies. Besides capital investments, the program offers clients unprecedented access to Accenture’s technology domain expertise.

Cosmo Tech says its technology helps businesses in various sectors provide a 360° view of an organization’s operations and allows decision-makers to simulate multiple scenarios to anticipate future events. Through its solutions, Cosmo Tech says it has helped asset-intensive organizations increase profits by 5% and cut capital and operating expenses by 10-15%.

With the investment from Accenture Venture’s Project Spotlight, Cosmo Tech can now expand the reach of its technology and provide Accenture’s clients with access to a new level of digital twin simulation, the companies say.

“Accenture and Cosmo Tech’s partnership is built on a common vision of enterprise reinvention by using data and technology to create new ways to engage with customers and build new opportunities for growth,” said Tom Lounibos, the managing director of Accenture Ventures.

In May 2022, Accenture made headlines for entering a strategic partnership with Red Hat to expedite the delivery of cloud-driven edge computing solutions. Leveraging Accenture’s Cloud First and Red Hat’s OpenShift, enterprises will access a hybrid solution that offers benefits such as speed and scalability.

Article Topics

Accenture  |  Cosmo Tech  |  digital twins  |  Iguazio  |  McKinsey  |  MLOps