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

Dec ‌9 (Reuters) - 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 overhaul 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 $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)