Accenture, Anthropic strike multi-year partnership to boost AI adoption

AI branding. Photographer: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images (Josep Lago/Photographer: Josep Lago/AFP/Get)

Accenture and Anthropic on Tuesday announced an expansion of their partnership through a new business group where around 30,000 of the consulting giant’s employees will be trained on the AI startup’s Claude model.

The tie-up reflects enterprise efforts across industries to upskill their workforce on artificial intelligence technologies, as companies look to boost productivity and streamline operations.

The move mirrors Accenture’s deal with OpenAI, announced last week, where it would train hundreds of thousands of its IT workers on ChatGPT Enterprise and work to integrate the technology into workflows.

“Our new partnership means that tens of thousands of Accenture developers will be using Claude Code, making this our largest ever deployment,” said Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei.

Consulting firms are racing to strengthen AI capabilities as clients expand the technology’s use beyond chatbots to over haul core operations and drive demand for packaged services like coding assistants, automated workflows, and multi-step task systems.

Accenture and Anthropic will also launch new joint offerings for regulated sectors such as financial services, health and life sciences, and the public sector - areas where AI adoption has lagged due to compliance and data-handling rules.

The consulting firm in September had unveiled a six-month US$865 million restructuring to realign its workforce and operations as demand shifts toward digital and AI services.

(Reporting by Arnav Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)