Market intel

At FabCon and SQLCon in Barcelona, Microsoft made Fabric IQ generally available in Copilot Chat and Cowork, so business definitions from Power BI semantic models inform Copilot answers. It also previewed a Fabric data engineering agent, IQ sharing in OneLake, Fabric observability and Database Hub, and made BigQuery mirroring and DiskANN vector indexes generally available.

Buyer takeawayFabric customers can ground Copilot and agents in governed semantic models today, while most agent features remain in preview and need careful evaluation before production use.

Ema closed a $77 million Series B round led by Bengaluru-based Creaegis, with Accel, S32 and Prosus also participating. The company says total funding now stands near $140 million. It plans to use the capital to build out go-to-market teams and expand into APAC and EMEA, and cites Wipro, Hitachi and NTT Data as customers of its agent platform.

Buyer takeawayBuyers evaluating Ema gain more confidence in its funding runway and should expect broader regional sales and support coverage in APAC and EMEA.

Evalueserve announced a partnership with Databricks aimed at speeding data and AI programmes for enterprise clients. It released three accelerators on the platform: a private credit intelligence lakehouse for underwriting and covenant monitoring, a reusable data quality framework, and a metadata-driven generator for warehouse models. The work draws on Databricks governance and analytics tooling, with no partner tier disclosed.

Buyer takeawayBuyers running Databricks, especially in financial services, gain a domain-led option with packaged accelerators, though they should confirm the partner tier and delivery depth.

Fujitsu reworked its Uvance business model around AI transformation, organised into consulting with forward deployed engineers, applications and AI agents, and AI platforms. It plans to release a new data and AI platform in March 2027 that combines its Kozuchi and Takane technology with frontier models and supports sovereign cloud. Fujitsu targets Uvance revenue above JPY 1.7 trillion by fiscal 2030.

Buyer takeawayFujitsu clients should expect a shift toward outcome-based and usage-based pricing and can plan sovereign data and AI workloads around the platform due in March 2027.

At its Dreamforce keynote, Salesforce introduced AIforce, an interface layer that exposes its data, workflows and permissions to outside AI tools. It includes Claudeforce, built with Anthropic and now in open beta, Slackforce and Agentforce Coworker. The company also previewed Koa, a CRM reasoning model post-trained on NVIDIA Nemotron, with general availability expected in winter 2026.

Buyer takeawaySalesforce customers can increasingly reach CRM data and agents from Claude and Slack, so buyers should review governance, licensing and permission models before opening these channels.

PwC US and PwC India signed an agreement to form a jointly owned venture that merges PwC India's consulting business with the India-based capabilities of PwC US Advisory. Sanjeev Krishan, chair of PwC India, will be CEO. The platform covers strategy, technology, engineering, AI and managed services and is intended partly to support US companies running GCCs in India. Closing is expected in the first half of 2027.

Buyer takeawayCompanies with India GCCs should expect a single, larger PwC delivery entity and should review existing contracts ahead of the 2027 closing.

Oracle reported first quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of about $19.35 billion, up 30% year on year, with infrastructure revenue more than doubling to $7.4 billion and total cloud revenue up 62%. Remaining performance obligations reached $664 billion. The company guided to at least $90 billion in revenue for the full fiscal year and reported more than $30 billion in AI cloud bookings.

Buyer takeawayThe scale of committed AI cloud demand suggests Oracle will keep investing heavily in infrastructure and database services, though buyers should watch capacity allocation and pricing as large AI contracts absorb supply.

Accenture and Google Cloud created the Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group inside their existing joint business group. It will build a team of 1,000 forward deployed engineers drawn from roughly 50,000 Google Cloud-skilled staff, focused on Gemini Enterprise adoption, industry solutions and moving AI pilots into production. Accenture was also named Google Cloud Global Services Partner of the Year for a fourth year.

Buyer takeawayGoogle Cloud customers planning Gemini Enterprise rollouts gain a dedicated Accenture engineering pool, which may shorten time from pilot to production.

HyperVault, the data centre subsidiary of TCS, has secured 264 acres in Hyderabad for an AI data centre campus planned to reach up to one gigawatt in phases. HyperVault and partners, including strategic investor TPG, expect to invest up to 70,000 crore rupees. The campus targets frontier AI companies and hyperscalers and has Telangana government support.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises with data residency needs in India gain a future domestic option for large AI workloads backed by a major services provider.

ESDS Software Solution made its stock market debut after a Rs 720 crore IPO priced at Rs 429 per share, which drew bids of about 136 times the shares on offer. Shares opened at Rs 757 on NSE and then hit the upper circuit. The offer documents set aside most of the proceeds for cloud equipment at its Indian data centres.

Buyer takeawayA listed ESDS with fresh capital and public disclosure obligations gives sovereign cloud buyers more visibility into its finances and capacity build-out.

ServiceNow acquired Sweep, a Tel Aviv and New York company whose agentic workspace monitors and governs metadata across ServiceNow, Salesforce and HubSpot. Terms were not disclosed, though Israeli press estimated the price in the hundreds of millions of dollars. ServiceNow said the deal strengthens AI-native development and agentic deployment for CRM, following its earlier purchase of ai.work.

Buyer takeawayThe deal signals that ServiceNow is pushing harder into CRM, so buyers running Salesforce alongside ServiceNow should watch how Sweep support for rival platforms evolves.

Snowflake reported second quarter fiscal 2027 product revenue of $1.49 billion, up 37% year on year, with total revenue of $1.55 billion and remaining performance obligations of $9 billion. Customers spending over $1 million annually rose 27% to 828. The company raised its full-year product revenue forecast to $6.07 billion and lifted its operating margin target.

Buyer takeawayAccelerating consumption suggests customers are expanding AI and data workloads on Snowflake, which supports its long-term viability as a strategic platform choice.

Hexaware told the Indian stock exchanges that Vivek Jetley, a President at EXL who led its insurance, healthcare and life sciences units, will become CEO on 28 October 2026. Srikrishna Ramakarthikeyan, CEO for 12 years, steps down from the role and the board on that date and stays on as a senior advisor. Majority shareholder Carlyle backed the appointment.

Buyer takeawayGCC clients should expect continuity through the October handover, but should ask how the new CEO's data and AI background will shape Hexaware's GCC 2.0 roadmap and account priorities.

Yotta CEO Sunil Gupta said the company intends to file draft IPO papers with SEBI in October and list in the January to March 2027 quarter, seeking up to $1.5 billion mainly through fresh shares. Proceeds are earmarked for debt repayment, GPU purchases and further sovereign cloud capacity. GPUs contribute about half of revenue, and overseas clients now form most of its customer base.

Buyer takeawayBuyers can expect Yotta to add GPU and sovereign cloud capacity, though the shift toward international clients means Indian enterprises should confirm capacity commitments in their contracts.

Snowflake and LSEG announced an expanded five-year enterprise collaboration at Snowflake World Tour London. LSEG increases its use of the Snowflake AI Data Cloud across its data, analytics and risk businesses, while Snowflake will license LSEG World-Check for its own customer onboarding. Joint customers can combine licensed LSEG content with their own data for governed analytics and AI.

Buyer takeawayFinancial services firms on Snowflake get easier governed access to LSEG content for AI and analytics work without building separate data pipelines.

EY US formed an alliance with Aaru, whose platform builds populations of AI agents that model how defined audiences behave. EY will pair the simulations with its sector expertise, starting with financial services clients testing marketing, pricing, sales and merger scenarios. In a blinded test, Aaru reproduced in one day a wealth management study that originally took EY six months of fieldwork.

Buyer takeawayMarketing and strategy teams can test scenarios with simulated audiences faster than traditional surveys, though validation against real outcomes remains important.

Infosys renewed and widened its work with Dutch lender ABN AMRO, covering application development, testing and support aimed at simplifying and modernising the bank's IT estate. The programme uses Infosys Topaz generative and agentic AI services to embed AI across the bank's technology landscape. Duration and contract value were not disclosed.

Buyer takeawayThe renewal signals continued bank appetite for multi-year AI-assisted modernisation deals with Indian providers.

Impetus expanded its Prism observability product into an AI trust platform. New features include token and cost visibility for AI agents, end-to-end agent tracing, monitoring for PII leakage, toxicity and prompt injection, and token optimisation advice. Prism now gives a single view across cloud, Databricks and Snowflake estates and adds cost anomaly detection and Snowflake sizing recommendations.

Buyer takeawayDatabricks and Snowflake customers moving agents into production can use Prism to track AI cost and risk, but should validate the accuracy and savings figures Impetus quotes.

Sierra became a launch partner on OpenAI's new business marketplace. Eligible OpenAI customers can apply part of their existing OpenAI spending commitment to building customer-facing agents on Sierra's platform. The move extends Sierra's earlier involvement with OpenAI Frontier and pairs the marketplace route with Sierra's outcome-based pricing, where customers pay for results such as a retained subscriber or a completed sale.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises with committed OpenAI budgets can now fund Sierra agent projects from that commitment instead of opening a separate procurement line.

Snowflake priced an upsized private placement of $3.75 billion in convertible senior notes, one day after proposing a $3.5 billion offering. The raise follows a quarter of faster product revenue growth and gives the company additional capital for investment in its AI data platform and other corporate purposes.

Buyer takeawayThe added capital gives Snowflake more room to fund AI product development and acquisitions, which reduces near-term vendor viability concerns for large customers.

Coforge's board named Akhil Gupta as chairperson and independent director for a five-year term starting 29 September 2026, after a global search run with Egon Zehnder. Gupta previously served as vice chairman of Bharti Enterprises and sits on several boards. Chief executive Sudhir Singh tied the appointment to the company's enterprise AI growth agenda following the Encora acquisition.

Buyer takeawayThe appointment completes Coforge's board leadership after the Encora deal, which gives enterprise clients more governance stability at a firm that has grown quickly through acquisition.

Sierra announced a major update to Ghostwriter, its agent-building tool, which now works as a team member in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Teams can mention it in a channel or let it raise issues on its own. It flags problems, proposes improvements and experiments, and tracks A/B tests until results are statistically significant. Sierra said a broader rollout would begin the following week.

Buyer takeawayCustomer experience teams running Sierra agents can push routine tuning and monitoring work into the chat tools they already use, though wide availability only starts in October.

NelsonHall placed Hitachi Digital Services among the Overall Leaders in its 2026 assessment of AI-enabled cloud infrastructure management services, which reviewed 19 global providers across AI use, cloud orchestration and Azure, AWS and Google Cloud skills. The analyst firm pointed to its full lifecycle approach and its HARC managed services and agent portfolio.

Buyer takeawayBuyers shortlisting partners to run AI and data workloads in the cloud can treat this as independent evidence of HDS operating depth, alongside its HARC reliability offering.

Databricks bought Row Zero, a cloud spreadsheet startup founded by former AWS and Tableau engineers, for an undisclosed sum. It plans to combine the product with its Genie assistant so people and agents can work on governed enterprise data in a spreadsheet view without exporting files. Chief executive Ali Ghodsi said more acquisitions of this kind are planned.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises standardised on Databricks may be able to move spreadsheet-based analysis onto governed data, reducing uncontrolled data exports.

NiCE made Cognigy generally available in India, offering AI agents across voice, text, image and WhatsApp with local speech support for Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and code-mixed Hinglish. The service runs from a Mumbai environment with Hyderabad as the disaster recovery site, supports more than 30 channels and can be deployed on NiCE CXone or as a standalone product.

Buyer takeawayIndian enterprises can now deploy Cognigy agents with in-country hosting and native language support, which eases data residency and adoption concerns for local customer service.

USEReady joined the OpenAI Partner Network, gaining access to OpenAI enablement and support resources. The company says it has already delivered production systems on the OpenAI Agents SDK and offers about 30 prebuilt cognitive agents through its AlphaGenie toolkit. Its OpenAI work will span AI strategy, data modernisation, agentic application development, LLM operations and managed services.

Buyer takeawayMid-market and enterprise buyers using OpenAI models can add USEReady to partner shortlists, particularly where agent projects also need BI and data modernisation work.

Accenture Ventures made an undisclosed investment in Within, whose platform records how employees work across applications and turns that into a continuously updated context layer for automation. The partnership will take clients from process discovery to agent deployment across finance, HR, sales, customer service, IT, supply chain and procurement. Accenture cited survey data showing few executives see sustained AI value.

Buyer takeawayBuyers struggling to scale AI agents can use the Accenture and Within pairing to ground agent design in observed process data before deployment.

Deloitte India and software intelligence firm CAST agreed a strategic alliance covering Asia-Pacific and Japan. CAST will map application architecture, dependencies, technical debt and open-source risk, and Deloitte will use those assessments in legacy and mainframe modernisation, cloud moves, AI readiness, technology due diligence and managed services. The partners plan playbooks, proof-of-value projects and industry accelerators.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises planning to modernise legacy estates or shift work to India centres can get a data-based view of application risk before committing budgets.

UK and Ireland infrastructure services group M Group selected HCLTech to modernise IT operations across more than 200 sites. The work runs on HCLTech's AI Force platform and aims to simplify the IT estate, improve resilience and support digital programmes across water, energy, telecoms, transport and defence units. Contract value and timeline were not disclosed.

Buyer takeawayThe deal is a reference for large AI Force deployments in multi-site, operations-heavy businesses.

Airtel Cloud, launched by Bharti Airtel's Xtelify unit in August 2025, has signed roughly 40 enterprise customers within a year, with manufacturers accounting for about a quarter. VE Commercial Vehicles is among them. Airtel reports traction in disaster recovery, backup, storage and video surveillance services as manufacturers seek to keep AI and operational data in India.

Buyer takeawaySovereign cloud demand is spreading beyond government into manufacturing, so industrial buyers now have a telco-backed domestic option with early reference customers.

Accenture and Anthropic agreed to build a team of embedded evaluators who will work alongside Anthropic's internal teams and safety partners to red-team models, run alignment assessments and test safeguards. Each company plans to put at least 1 billion dollars into AI safety over five years. Accenture will draw on its responsible AI practice and on Faculty, the UK AI firm it acquired.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises in regulated sectors can look to Accenture for model evaluation and red-teaming skills that are being built with a frontier model developer.

Databricks named Qubika its Latin America Innovation Partner of the Year at the Data + AI World Tour in São Paulo. Qubika reports more than 250 certified Databricks engineers, about 1,100 staff and two Databricks industry specializations, and it offers QBricks, an accelerator for building and evaluating enterprise AI agents on Databricks. The award follows its move to the Gold partner tier in 2026.

Buyer takeawayThe award signals strong standing with Databricks, which can help buyers secure platform support and co-investment on joint projects.

Sierra achieved AIUC-1 certification, a standard for AI agents that tests behaviour under manipulation attempts, data access probes and authorisation limits. The Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company tested its chat and voice agents in normal and adversarial scenarios, and Schellman audited its technical, legal and governance controls. Testing repeats at least quarterly, with a full audit each year.

Buyer takeawayRisk and procurement teams gain third-party evidence on agent safety controls that sits alongside Sierra's SOC 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 credentials.

Impetus Technologies joined the OpenAI Partner Network at the Select tier. The company says it has put more than 30 production AI use cases into service for Fortune 500 clients, including claims processing in banking and insurance, using a context engineering lifecycle that organises enterprise knowledge into semantic layers, ontologies and knowledge graphs. It plans to expand OpenAI-based offerings and client-embedded talent.

Buyer takeawayBanks and insurers standardising on OpenAI models gain another partner with formal OpenAI status and a context engineering method aimed at grounding agents in enterprise data.

Tavant said GenWay Home Mortgage, a national lender focused on non-QM and government loans, has gone live with its TOUCHLESS AI mortgage automation platform. GenWay is applying it to non-QM and Ginnie Mae origination, with six underwriting automation products moved into production within three months. The deployment covers document and data processing, workflow automation and guided task execution.

Buyer takeawayMortgage lenders weighing AI underwriting automation have a fresh reference for fast deployment in non-QM lending, though the cost and throughput gains Tavant cites remain vendor claims.

HCLTech created HCLTech Pulse, a dedicated business unit for companies with annual revenue between 500 million and 5 billion dollars. It bundles AI strategy, data and AI platforms, cloud, application modernisation, cybersecurity, engineering and managed services into one engagement model, aimed at firms moving from AI pilots to scaled deployment without hiring several niche providers.

Buyer takeawayMid-sized enterprises get a tier-one provider offer packaged for their scale, which can reduce the number of vendors they manage.

USEReady made SemaBridge available to Snowflake customers. The tool extracts business logic from BI tools, starting with Power BI and with Tableau and Qlik planned, converts it into a versioned standard and deploys it into Snowflake Semantic Views, Cortex Analyst and Cortex Agents. Every change carries an audit trail, and processing stays inside the customer environment.

Buyer takeawaySnowflake customers rolling out Cortex Agents can use this to keep agent answers consistent with existing BI metric definitions, though support beyond Power BI is still on the roadmap.

Databricks will invest more than US$350 million in Singapore over three years, growing local headcount from about 250 to over 500 and opening a larger regional headquarters. It named iFAST, Singapore Customs and Singtel as new customers in the region. The plan came alongside a partnership with Singapore's EDB and IMDA linked to the national AI strategy.

Buyer takeawayAsia Pacific buyers can expect deeper local support and delivery capacity from Databricks over the next three years.

Kyndryl secured a ten-year award under the NASPO ValuePoint Cloud and Software Solutions program, which lets US state agencies, counties, cities and universities buy its services on common terms. Planned uses include mainframe modernization, databases and case management for social programmes, and contact centre self-service, supported by Kyndryl Consult, its agentic AI framework and Kyndryl Bridge.

Buyer takeawayUS state and local agencies can procure Kyndryl modernization and data services through an existing cooperative vehicle, which shortens procurement cycles.

Freshworks published its September innovation update, which lets admins describe a process in plain language and have Freddy AI Agent Studio turn it into executable workflow logic. The release also brings a Freddy AI Agent for email, better handling of attachments and screenshots, filtered knowledge sources for agents, a more proactive Copilot and an MCP Gateway for Freshservice. Some features are limited to early access customers.

Buyer takeawayService teams on Freshdesk or Freshservice can build and govern agent workflows with less configuration effort, though they should confirm which features are generally available before planning rollouts.

The Adecco Group announced a global rollout of Salesforce Agentforce Coworker across more than 40 countries, covering about 27,000 employees after pilots in the UK and France. Sales staff and recruiters will use the assistant to prioritize prospects, prepare briefs, track leads and launch screening and onboarding agents. The deployment builds on an unlimited Agentforce enterprise agreement signed earlier in 2026.

Buyer takeawayA staffing firm at this scale moving from pilot to global use gives buyers a reference case for assistant adoption in sales and recruitment workflows.

SAP added the TabPFN-3.5 Plus tabular foundation model from Prior Labs, which it acquired in July 2026, to SAP AI Core. The model produces predictions directly from structured business tables without conventional training or tuning, and targets uses such as cash flow forecasting, payment delay prediction, supplier risk scoring and churn assessment. SAP has committed over one billion euros to Prior Labs.

Buyer takeawaySAP customers can test predictive use cases on ERP data with less data science effort, which may reduce reliance on separate machine learning platforms for routine forecasting.

TCS entered a long-term partnership with Wiesbaden-based property finance specialist Aareal Bank to move the bank to an AI-powered, cloud-first operating model. TCS will run data centre operations, cloud platforms, workplace services, cybersecurity and infrastructure management. The two firms also plan to explore AI-driven operations and intelligent security services over the course of the engagement.

Buyer takeawayEuropean banks weighing a full outsourcing of infrastructure can watch this deal as a test of how far AI-led delivery lowers run costs under strict regulation.

Kyndryl completed its purchase of Healthcare IT Leaders, a US provider of consulting and application managed services to hospitals and health systems, for up to 350 million dollars including an earnout. The deal adds expertise in EHR, ERP, revenue cycle, cloud and data work. Kyndryl kept its fiscal 2027 outlook and paused share buybacks to preserve flexibility.

Buyer takeawayHealth systems now get Kyndryl infrastructure and AI services paired with clinical application specialists, so buyers should test how quickly the two teams deliver jointly.

Polestar Analytics received the Databricks Brickbuilder Specialization for Retail, Consumer Goods, Travel and Hospitality. The designation requires certified staff, industry skills badges and named customer outcomes on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Polestar cites work on customer 360, personalization, demand forecasting and price optimization, and plans further solutions on Databricks Genie for these sectors.

Buyer takeawayRetail and consumer goods firms running Databricks gain a validated partner with sector accelerators, which can shorten delivery of pricing, promotion and forecasting use cases.

Fujitsu and Palantir renewed the strategic partnership they began in 2020, and Fujitsu signed a new agreement covering Palantir AIP and Foundry. As a Global FDE Partner, Fujitsu will supply forward deployed engineers who build custom AI applications on Palantir software for clients in Japan and abroad, drawing on its Takane language model and Uvance offerings.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises standardising on Palantir AIP or Foundry gain another large integrator with dedicated engineering capacity for building and deploying agentic applications.

Simform gained the Microsoft Solutions Partner designation for AI Business Solutions, which gives it all three Microsoft AI Cloud designations alongside Cloud and AI Platforms and Security. The company says fewer than 50 partners worldwide hold these together with Azure Expert MSP status. It also described a six-part agentic operating model and plans to pursue Microsoft Frontier Partner status in fiscal 2027.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises standardised on Microsoft can consider Simform for agentic AI work that spans Azure, Fabric and Copilot, with credentials verified by Microsoft's partner programme.

Rackspace Technology joined the NVIDIA Cloud Partner Program and announced the Institutional Sovereign Pod, a governed AI infrastructure design that will combine NVIDIA Blackwell systems with Palantir Foundry and AIP in environments Rackspace operates. The offer targets regulated enterprises and governments, with Rackspace providing forward deployed engineering and managed operations. No general availability date was given.

Buyer takeawayRegulated buyers that need managed, sovereign GPU capacity gain another operator option, though they should confirm delivery timelines before committing.

Frost & Sullivan gave Agilisium its 2026 Global Technology Innovation Leadership Recognition for agentic AI in life sciences, citing its domain-oriented agent framework with built-in governance. The company reported more than 1,050 staff, six delivery centres, over 25 life sciences customers and more than 190 live projects, and said its forward deployment model can bring an agent into production in about 60 days.

Buyer takeawayPharma and biotech buyers get third-party support for Agilisium's production track record in regulated workflows, though the outcome figures it cites are self-reported.

CGI bought Callibrity, a Cincinnati technology consultancy founded in 2007, adding about 120 consultants with experience in financial services, insurance and manufacturing. The deal closed on 8 September and was announced a day later. CGI says it expands its capacity for production-ready enterprise AI, platform engineering and digital product work in the US Midwest. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Buyer takeawayBuyers in the US Midwest gain a local CGI team with AI engineering skills backed by CGI's global delivery network.

TCS opened an Industrial Autonomy and Engineering Lab at its Pune campus that simulates a self-optimising factory with minimal human involvement. The facility includes a robotic battery pack assembly line and uses digital twins, industrial AI and real-time operational data to prototype predictive maintenance, automated quality inspection and process optimisation. It follows a similar lab built with NVIDIA in Bengaluru.

Buyer takeawayManufacturers can use the lab to test industrial AI and digital twin use cases with TCS before committing to plant-level rollouts.

ServiceNow and T-Systems announced that T-Systems is now certified as a Sovereign Partner Cloud Provider, running the ServiceNow AI Platform on its T Cloud infrastructure in a sovereign setup. The offer targets regulated European industries and lets customers buy consulting, implementation, licensing, hosting and operations from a single provider, extending a partnership with Deutsche Telekom that began in 2014.

Buyer takeawayRegulated German and European buyers gain a sovereign hosting route for ServiceNow AI workflows, which can ease data residency and compliance reviews.

Genpact named Sumita Pandit senior vice president and chief financial officer, effective 9 September 2026. She reports to CEO BK Kalra and replaces Michael Weiner, who stays on as an advisor until the end of the first quarter of 2027. Pandit previously served as president and CFO of Radian Group and held fintech investment banking and operating roles at J.P. Morgan, dLocal and Goldman Sachs.

Buyer takeawayBuyers in financial services should expect continuity in delivery, with a finance chief whose fintech and M&A background may shape how Genpact funds and prices its Agentic Operations offerings.

NTT DATA is extending its AI-based infrastructure operations platform across the global estate of Daimler Truck. The platform combines real-time monitoring of tens of thousands of devices, predictive analytics to head off production disruptions and automated incident handling, covering IT and cloud infrastructure, SAP Basis and network operations, delivered through a mix of onsite and offshore teams.

Buyer takeawayManufacturers can use this deployment as a reference for predictive, AI-driven operations at large scale when assessing NTT DATA for managed services.

US health system PeaceHealth selected Tech Mahindra and its healthcare subsidiary The HCI Group to modernise and manage core IT functions, including applications, infrastructure, data and security. The companies describe it as a long-term transformation programme intended to prepare PeaceHealth for AI-driven care operations. Duration and value were not disclosed.

Buyer takeawayHealthcare providers can look to this deal as a reference for outsourcing data and infrastructure modernisation ahead of AI adoption.

ISG placed Tredence as a global Leader in its 2026 Specialty Analytics and AI Services report for supply chain, assessing portfolio attractiveness and competitive agility. Tredence framed the result around its agentic approach to supply chains, including a central coordinating agent built on a unified data foundation, and ISG's analyst pointed to its domain-led analytics and work on supply chain visibility and planning.

Buyer takeawaySupply chain and operations buyers can treat Tredence as an analyst-validated option for agentic planning and visibility work when building a shortlist.

Teneo.AI completed a rights issue expected to raise about SEK 74 million before costs at SEK 0.05 per share. Only about 51.5% was taken up by subscribers, so guarantors covered the remaining 48.5%. The issue supports a refinancing the company described as securing a debt-free position, which it reported as completed in mid-September.

Buyer takeawayThe refinancing eases near-term balance sheet risk, but the weak take-up means buyers should still review Teneo.AI financial stability in long-term contracts.

Marking ten years in business, MathCo announced a move to an AI-native way of working that it expects to create more than 2,000 specialised AI roles. It targets threefold growth over four years and a workforce of over 4,000 AI-native professionals across India and the US, with a hiring focus on forward deployed engineers. The model is organised around a framework it calls the Thinking Architecture.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises using MathCo should expect more forward deployed engineering in engagements and should check how the new operating model changes staffing, pricing and delivery governance.

EXL said Vivek Jetley, president and head of its insurance, healthcare and life sciences business, will leave on 26 October 2026 to become chief executive of Hexaware Technologies. He will stay in the role during a handover period. EXL did not name a successor in the announcement and pointed to the depth of its leadership bench to maintain execution of its data and AI strategy.

Buyer takeawayInsurance and healthcare clients of EXL should ask who will own their accounts after October and confirm that delivery leadership and roadmap commitments remain unchanged.

Qubika, a Databricks Gold partner, received the Databricks Financial Services Specialization, which recognises its work helping banks, lenders and other financial institutions with data modernisation, governance and AI adoption on the Databricks platform. The specialization adds to an industry credential for communications, media and gaming that Qubika earned in July 2026, and follows its Gold tier status from earlier in the year.

Buyer takeawayFinancial services buyers planning Databricks programmes can treat Qubika as a partner with validated industry experience on the platform.

ServiceNow and Aramco Digital, the technology arm of Aramco, signed a collaboration agreement under which Aramco Digital will use the ServiceNow platform to standardize and govern digital workflows across affiliates, subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 50 countries. The scope covers AI-powered workflows, customer experience, group shared services and ERP modernization.

Buyer takeawayA group-wide energy sector deployment strengthens ServiceNow references in the Middle East for enterprises consolidating shared services on one workflow platform.

C5i announced that Krishnan Venkata joined as President and Chief Operating Officer, effective 20 August 2026. He previously served as Chief Client Officer at LatentView Analytics and brings over two decades in data, analytics and AI services. At C5i he will run operations and lead client relationships, sales, account management and partnerships across the Americas and Europe.

Buyer takeawayClients in the Americas and Europe should expect a new senior owner for account management and delivery, which may bring changes to engagement and partnership structures.

Backbase, which acquired Kasisto in June 2026, appointed Roland Booijen as Chief Product Officer, Agentic Banking, reporting to CEO Jouk Pleiter. He will lead product strategy for conversational banking, relationship intelligence and customer operations, the areas where Kasisto's conversational and agentic AI now sits. Booijen founded the Dutch payment app Tikkie and previously ran Backbase's ecosystems and marketplace products.

Buyer takeawayBanks using Kasisto KAI should expect its roadmap to be set within Backbase's agentic banking product line and should confirm support and integration plans with Backbase.

Dentsu India widened its Generative Engine Optimization practice, which helps brands understand how large language models and AI assistants interpret and surface them. The offer is built around dentsu Search Intelligence and its AI Search Suite, combining data, search, content, technical optimisation and measurement. A cross-functional task force spanning analytics, media and technology supports it, and dentsu plans further technology partnerships.

Buyer takeawayMarketing and analytics leaders tracking brand visibility in AI assistants can engage dentsu for measurement and optimisation of generative search presence.

TO THE NEW named Somnath Adak Group Chief Financial Officer for itself and affiliate CloudKeeper, effective 30 September 2026. Based in Singapore, he will run finance and legal across the group's operations in Asia, the US, the UK, the UAE and Australia. He was previously CFO and then CEO of Singapore-listed Asian Pay Television Trust, with earlier roles at Macquarie, ITC and Grant Thornton.

Buyer takeawayThe appointment of a listed-company finance executive suggests the group is tightening governance, which buyers may see as a sign of scale and longer-term stability.

HCLSoftware, the software arm of HCLTech, announced plans to buy Zagreb-based Robotiq.ai, an enterprise robotic process automation provider used by banks, insurers and telecom operators. The RPA engine will be added to HCL UnO Agentic so AI-driven workflows can act inside applications that lack usable APIs. Closing is expected in November 2026.

Buyer takeawayClients standardising on HCL UnO Agentic can automate tasks in legacy applications without separate RPA tooling.

Tata Communications and SASTRA Deemed University opened a Centre of Excellence in Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics at the Thanjavur campus with a joint investment of Rs 3.5 crore. The centre covers applied research, curriculum work, security infrastructure and mentoring by Tata Communications staff, building on an existing cybersecurity lab the company runs at the university.

Buyer takeawayThe tie-up adds to Tata Communications' security talent pipeline, a modest positive for buyers that rely on its managed security around sovereign cloud workloads.

ISG rated NTT DATA a Leader in its Provider Lens studies for insurance IT outsourcing and for insurance strategic advisory and enablement services. The analyst firm pointed to the NTT DATA AI for Insurance agentic solution, hybrid cloud orchestration and its acquisition of The Alchemy Technology Services, which strengthened its presence in the UK and Ireland.

Buyer takeawayInsurers planning core system replacement can include NTT DATA on shortlists for both advisory and run services, based on independent analyst assessment.

SimplAI reported that Nucleus Research placed it in the Accelerator group of its 2026 Technology Value Matrix for low-code application platforms, published on 8 September. Nucleus uses that group for vendors strong on usability and ease of deployment. On the same day SimplAI also noted an Aspirant placement in an Everest Group PEAK Matrix covering 27 process orchestration product vendors.

Buyer takeawayBuyers comparing agentic AI platforms can add SimplAI to shortlists where fast deployment and low-code agent building matter more than breadth of capability.

Hitachi became a general member of the Tokenomics Foundation, a Linux Foundation project building open standards and benchmarks for the cost and value of AI usage. Hitachi Digital Services represents the group and plans to share data on high-volume token consumption and apply the resulting standards to its HARC offering to extend FinOps practice into AI operations.

Buyer takeawayEnterprises struggling to forecast AI spend may gain vendor-neutral cost benchmarks, and HDS clients can ask how token cost governance will appear in HARC contracts.

Aspire Systems launched PAVE, short for Progressive AI Value, a methodology to help enterprises move AI from experiments to measured productivity gains. It covers choosing where AI has most impact, splitting work between people and AI, refining how AI runs inside workflows and measuring results over time. The company positions it for software engineering, quality engineering and enterprise operations.

Buyer takeawayBuyers struggling to show returns from AI pilots can use PAVE as a structured engagement model, though it is a consulting framework rather than a software product.

CGI formalised a strategic partnership with D-Wave Quantum after more than a year of joint work. CGI will add D-Wave's Advantage2 system and hybrid solvers to its advanced technology services and co-develop use cases in logistics, transportation and retail, including train scheduling, supply chain planning, delivery routing, workforce scheduling and energy grid optimisation.

Buyer takeawayFirms with hard scheduling and routing problems can pilot quantum optimisation through an established integrator.

Straive and Imagetwin formed a partnership that embeds Imagetwin's image forensics in Straive's aiKira Editorial Desk API. Publishers can screen submissions for manipulated, duplicated, plagiarised or AI-generated figures alongside more than 20 automated integrity checks on text, authorship, scope and references. Straive said the combined tool caught 98 percent of image issues in a pilot.

Buyer takeawayScholarly publishers using Straive can add screening for AI-generated and altered figures before peer review without a separate vendor integration.

Blend360 won the Best Place to Work in Data and AI award for solution providers at the 2026 Global DataIQ Awards in London and was a finalist in five more categories. The company links the award to its training model, which includes 40 hours of technology training per employee each quarter, more than 30 centres of excellence and a rotational early-career programme across five countries.

Buyer takeawayBuyers assessing talent depth and retention at a data science partner can treat this as a signal of investment in staff skills, alongside Blend's large AWS and Databricks certification counts.

DXC Technology and Swiss autonomous driving firm LOXO formed a strategic partnership to move driverless middle-mile and last-mile logistics from pilots into repeatable enterprise operations. LOXO supplies its vehicle-agnostic Digital Driver software, while DXC Engineering provides data, AI, engineering and systems integration work. The partners plan to start in Europe and expand to other markets.

Buyer takeawayLogistics and manufacturing buyers evaluating autonomous delivery can look to DXC for the data, AI and integration work needed around a specialist autonomy platform.

Infosys inaugurated a second software development block of about 330,000 square feet at its Indore Super Corridor campus, which already employs more than 3,300 people. The site will expand work in cloud, application development, AI and machine learning, and cybersecurity for financial services, retail, life sciences and manufacturing clients, with skilling ties to local institutes.

Buyer takeawayBuyers seeking tier-two Indian delivery locations for AI and cloud work gain more Infosys capacity outside the main metros.

Chetu signed Forthright Technology Partners, a Florida cybersecurity-focused managed IT and advisory firm, to its channel network. Forthright will draw on Chetu's global development teams to deliver custom AI and digital transformation projects for manufacturing, healthcare and professional services clients without adding internal staff. Chetu packages its AI delivery through an eight-step Track2AI framework.

Buyer takeawayMid-sized firms buying AI services through local managed service providers may find Chetu engineering behind the delivery, so they should clarify subcontracting and data handling terms.

Valiance Solutions released Audit AI, a tool built on its multimodal AI platform that checks every voucher and transaction instead of a sample. It combines document ingestion, rule-based validation and AI pattern analysis to flag cases for auditors, who keep control of approvals. The company offers an air-gapped sovereign deployment for government and defence and a cloud version for commercial users.

Buyer takeawayPublic sector and finance audit teams can evaluate Audit AI for full-coverage checks, including an on-premise option suited to sensitive data.

AceCloud's September platform update introduced Glacier and Deep Archive restores for cold data, new NVMe block storage tiers in its Mumbai2 region, account-level bandwidth quotas with alerts, and tool calling with retrieval support for AI agents. It also added partner billing features and exportable access audit reports, while Blackwell GPU instances remain in testing.

Buyer takeawayThe cost controls and audit exports help buyers manage spend and compliance on a domestic cloud, though the newer GPU instances are not yet generally available.

ServiceNow published its September 2026 release of the EmployeeWorks web app, the employee experience product that combines Moveworks conversational AI and search with ServiceNow workflows. The update adds configurable home pages, topic directory templates, multilingual announcements and time-bound task delegation, renames legacy plugins under the EmployeeWorks brand and places a native mobile experience in controlled availability.

Buyer takeawayBuyers evaluating Moveworks should now assess it as part of the ServiceNow EmployeeWorks roadmap and licensing rather than as a standalone vendor.

Capgemini signed a definitive agreement to sell Capgemini Government Solutions to ITC Federal, a US provider serving law enforcement, homeland security and defence agencies. The unit accounted for about 0.4 percent of group revenue in 2025. The sale closed on 30 September. Capgemini did not disclose the price or give a stated rationale beyond a divestment process launched earlier in the year.

Buyer takeawayUS federal clients of the unit will now contract with ITC Federal, while Capgemini's commercial data and AI work is unaffected.

IBM's September mid-month release for watsonx Orchestrate reorganised the product around build, AgentOps, governance and an AI Gateway in preview. It added content guardrails that can evaluate agent inputs and outputs with any model registered in a tenant, and a consolidated settings panel in the flow builder covering scheduling, data masking, translations and notifications.

Buyer takeawayTeams running agents on watsonx Orchestrate get finer control over content safety policies and a clearer path toward governing agents from a single console.

Hyderabad-based sovereign cloud provider BharathCloud signed a partnership with Ibentos, an AI technology firm with operations in North America and India, after talks at the India-Canada Business Summit. BharathCloud will use the Ibentos HYPE marketing platform for its own campaigns and events and may offer similar capabilities to its customers.

Buyer takeawayThe deal is mainly about BharathCloud's own go-to-market, so buyers should treat any resulting marketing tools as an add-on and judge the provider on its core sovereign cloud capacity.

TCS won a 122.6 crore rupee bid to build the next phase of the Odisha State Workflow Automation System, extending its work with the state government by about six years. The upgraded platform, based on TCS DigiBOLT, adds analytics and AI features, a microservices design, mobile access and Odia language support for more than 4,600 offices and nearly 50,000 users.

Buyer takeawayPublic sector buyers can see that TCS is embedding analytics and AI into long-running government platforms rather than procuring them as separate projects.

Wipro disclosed to Indian stock exchanges that it has renewed its long-running digital workplace services contract with ABB. The renewed scope adds generative AI self-service, virtual agents, auto-remediation and telemetry-based device insights, delivered through the Wipro Intelligence suite, its WINGS platform and SmartOps AIOps tooling. Contract length and value were not disclosed.

Buyer takeawayBuyers of managed workplace services can expect Wipro to bundle AI-driven automation and analytics into renewals, which makes it worth asking for measurable service-level gains in return.