August 27, 2024

Big leagues

Hi there,

The Big 4 accounting firms have all announced billion-dollar investments in AI:

Deloitte — announced $1.4B upskilling program (December 2022) and $2B for development of industry-specific applications of tech including AI (April 2024)
EY — invested $1.4B in AI, launching EY.ai enablement platform (September 2023)
KPMG — spending $2B on AI & cloud services in partnership with Microsoft over 5 years (July 2023)
PwC — investing $1B in genAI in its US operations over 3 years (April 2023)

The biggest winner in these investments so far may be Microsoft and Microsoft-backed OpenAI — all 4 firms are working with one or both:

Deloitte AI Institute launched a generative AI copilot for its workforce built on OpenAI models (January 2024)
EY partnered with Microsoft to launch a genAI payroll chatbot (June 2023)
KPMG committed $2B to Microsoft's AI stack, projecting $12B in revenue over the next several years as a result (July 2023)
Most notably, PwC became OpenAI's first reseller and largest enterprise user (May 2024)

As enterprises figure out what to do with genAI, professional services firms are racing to capture those consulting dollars.

For example, less than one year after announcing it would invest $3B in the tech, publicly traded Accenture reported $600M in genAI bookings in Q2 FY 24 and $900M in Q3 FY 24.

On the company's Q2 FY 24 earnings call, CEO Julie Sweet said, "Our sales in generative AI…are the fastest we've ever seen."

With their clients looking for an edge using GAI and the consultants looking for ways to reimagine their operating model with GAI, we expect their activity — whether via partnerships, investments, or M&A — will continue to accelerate.

One area in particular we expect they'll dive into is the burgeoning area of autonomous agents.

For more, we break down in detail the Big 4's AI strategies — as well as those of Accenture, Bain, BCG, and McKinsey — in this report.

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal

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