IT services company Cognizant has announced a major push to expand its specialised AI workforce, committing to scale up to 5,000 Frontier Certified Engineers and 10,000 Frontier Business Operators. The first batch of trained staff is expected to be ready for deployment by the fourth quarter of 2026.
The company, said the move is meant to tackle a growing problem for businesses worldwide. Cognizant estimates that firms have spent more money on artificial intelligence than on any other technology in recent memory, yet many have little to show for it. The company puts this gap between AI's promise and its actual business impact at $4.5 trillion.
According to Cognizant, the shortfall is not caused by a lack of computing power. Instead, it stems from a shortage of skilled people and poor processes. To fix this, the firm plans to train and deploy workers who understand both the technology and the specific industries they serve.
Cognizant chief executive Ravi Kumar said the new workforce would take full responsibility for delivering results for clients, rather than simply installing new systems and walking away.
The Frontier teams will work across major technology platforms including those from Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Salesforce and ServiceNow, so that clients are not tied to any single provider.
Cognizant said a small two-person team recently redesigned a food service company's account management process, creating seventeen AI agents that saved managers about eleven hours a week and nearly tripled revenue per client account.
The company plans to expand its SkillSpring training programme to support the effort, alongside hiring fresh graduates from universities in the US and abroad.
"AI has exposed 93% of jobs to change, and the associated labor value remains untapped because the workforce architecture built for a pre-AI world cannot capture it. So we rebuilt the architecture for the world we are in now," said Cognizant Chief People Officer, Kathy Diaz. "Industry domain depth is a core strength of Cognizant, and we bring enterprise-scale experience across technology, processes and operations. We know how to take these powerful frontier tools and turn them into real business value, and we are training our workforce to do it at scale."
