Capgemini plans €2 billion AI investment, greater generative AI focus

French digital transformation giant Capgemini has announced plans to invest €2 billion in AI over the next three years, despite reporting slowing sales in some regions.

Alongside its announced investment, Capgemini launched a portfolio of generative AI services including generative AI for enterprise, customer experience, software engineering, and strategy.

The firm’s revenue was up 6.9% in H1 2023, though the growth across Q2 2023 was significantly slower than in the preceding year, at 5.2% constant exchange rate compared to 19.3% in Q2 2022.

While the UK, France, and the rest of the EU reported respective growth of 12%, 9.2%, 11.4% at constant exchange rates, its North American region reported just 3%. Asia-Pacific and Latin America reported a similarly low 4% growth.

It blamed the turbulent macroeconomic environment for the expected drop in some group performance, but noted that its cloud, data, and artificial intelligence activity continues to show good momentum.

“Thanks to a strong strategic positioning, we continue to gain market share as we accompany our clients in their transition towards a digital and sustainable economy,” said Aiman Ezzat, CEO at the Capgemini Group.

“I am convinced that generative AI will play a major role in this transition. The Group will invest €2 billion in artificial intelligence to build its leadership in this breakthrough technology, that must be deployed responsibly, reliably, and sustainably. 

“We are developing a portfolio of industry-specific offers and signing strategic partnerships, notably with Google Cloud and Microsoft, while training most of our workforce through our Data & AI Campus to fully leverage the power of generative AI in our operations. We have many client projects underway, a strong pipeline, and plan to double Data & AI teams to 60,000 in the next three years.”

The ‘generative AI strategy’ strand of Capgemini’s services aims to provide chief experience officers (CXO) with information to help them decide the most beneficial use of AI in their company and how this can be achieved.

Through the enterprise offering, Capgemini will enable its customers to combine their proprietary data with large language models to derive as much value as possible.

Its customer experience offering provides dedicated generative AI assistants, with a choice of four that can be customized to the needs of each client.

Earlier in July the firm announced a new service resulting from its long collaboration with Microsoft, named Azure Intelligent App Factory.

Through the service, Capgemini and Microsoft aim to help their customers bring their AI solutions to market quickly and safely. It facilitates using AI for intelligent business decisions, including the use of GitHub Copilot for coding and will help business leaders to adopt AI in an industry-specific and compliant manner.

With more companies adopting AI, concerns that the technology is fuelling a rising wave of layoffs have grown. Recent examples include Dropbox, which fired 16% of its staff and directly cited AI as a driving force in the decision.

But some companies are creating both economic growth and jobs through further AI investment.

The data analytics firm Quantexa recently announced it would invest a total of £200 million ($257 million) in AI, including £85 million ($109 million) for a dedicated London AI Innovation Center. 

The company estimated that the move would create 170 new jobs in London, and an an analysis of the investment by the University of Washington found that the global AI industry could benefit from the investment to the tune of £600 million ($771 million) by 2027.