Cognizant introduces EMEA AI Unit to support agentic AI at scale

Cognizant has established the EMEA AI Unit to advance the adoption of agentic AI among enterprises in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

The new organisational unit combines advisory, engineering, and delivery services to help clients implement, deploy, and run AI solutions within business environments. Its remit centres on supporting measurable business outcomes, while avoiding reliance on any single platform, model, or cloud provider.

This initiative operates within Cognizant’s wider AI Builder strategy. At its core is Frontier Deployed Engineering, a delivery model designed to move companies from early experimentation with AI to large-scale deployment and impact.

The model is structured in three parts, which include Foundation, Accelerate, and Transform.

The Foundation stage provides guidance on AI strategy, governance, technology selection, and early prototype development. Accelerate is intended to quickly move high-value use cases into production, reducing the typical time involved in scaling up such projects.

The Transform stage implements multi-agent delivery teams to automate entire business workflows and redesign operational processes, with an emphasis on ensuring performance and accountability.

The EMEA AI Unit is currently assisting clients situated at various points in their AI adoption journey.

A noted example involves a European online fashion retailer, where Cognizant’s work has shifted established AI use cases into live production environments, reportedly shortening development cycles from months to days. These efforts have targeted improvements in supply chain management, inventory oversight, returns handling, customer services, and margin protection.

In another project, a global pharmaceutical company is working with the unit to use multi-agent AI systems in research and development, addressing drug discovery, clinical trial design, and regulatory documentation.

Cognizant’s operational model is focused on technology neutrality, assisting clients in selecting and scaling AI solutions best suited to their unique business requirements. This approach is designed to allow organisations to move beyond pilot projects, while also addressing specific regional criteria in EMEA, such as data sovereignty, regulatory compliance, and sector-specific needs.

Cognizant EMEA president Manoj Mehta said: “Across EMEA, many organisations are enthusiastic about AI but are still working out how to turn that momentum into real business value.

“The EMEA AI Unit reflects Cognizant’s AI Builder strategy by bringing together the people, platforms and engineering expertise needed to move clients from pilots to payoff.

“Our approach is neutral by design: we work across clouds, models and ecosystems so clients can build agentic AI solutions that fit their business, integrate into operations and support accountability for outcomes.”

Separately, Cognizant has disclosed a five-year agreement with The Andover Companies, a mutual property and casualty insurer in the US. Through this partnership, Cognizant will modernise Andover’s core policy management systems, implement an enterprise data platform, and enhance the cybersecurity status of digital portals.

Part of the arrangement includes support for New York Department of Financial Services cybersecurity compliance and exploration of responsible AI applications across IT, underwriting, and claims.

In another announcement, Cognizant said that it has broadened its alliance with Anthropic, becoming a Global Premier Partner in the Claude Partner Network.

According to Cognizant, the renewed collaboration is aimed at bridging the divide between the technical capabilities of AI models and the ability of enterprises to achieve concrete business results. The work focuses on embedding AI inside existing enterprise infrastructure, supported by domain expertise and engineering scale.

Earlier in the month, Cognizant announced a partnership with Domyn, a European provider of sovereign AI infrastructure for regulated industries. This collaboration is intended to help organisations in regulated sectors across EMEA deploy AI solutions that secure data within client-controlled environments and meet European regulatory standards.