Wipro to invest $1 billion in AI over next 3 years

IT services firm Wipro on Wednesday said, it would invest $1 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) over the next three years to advance AI capabilities. The investment over the three years will help the company advance its foundation in AI, data and analytics capabilities, build new consulting capabilities and more, the company said in a statement.

The company has also launched a service - Wipro ai360, an AI-first innovation ecosystem and said that it would train all of its about 250,000 employees on AI over the course of the next 12 months. 

The announcement comes almost a week after rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said that it is planing to train 25,000 engineers to get them certified on Microsoft's Azure Open AI. 

“Artificial Intelligence is a fast-moving field,” said Thierry Delaporte, chief executive officer and managing director at Wipro Limited. “Especially with the emergence of generative AI, we expect a fundamental shift up ahead, for all industries. New business models, new ways of working, and new challenges, too. This is exactly why Wipro’s ai360 ecosystem places responsible AI operations at the heart of all our AI work.” 

The company further said, the platform will bring together 30,000 people working on data analytics and AI in the company along with the tech ecosystem from the company's four major business lines. Further, with ai360, it will continue to provide more customised, ongoing training for employees in AI-specialised roles, it said. 

Wipro will also look to invest in "cutting-edge" startups through Wipro Ventures. It is also going to launch a seed accelerator program for startups focussed on generative AI, to train them to become enterprise-ready. 

In May, Wipro announced it has partnered with Google to offer generative AI solutions to enterprises across sectors. The IT services firm will also train 20,000 employees on Google Cloud’s generative AI technologies. 

The company already has a generative AI CoE, where it works alongside technology partners, and academic institutions driving research in advanced areas of AI to help customers leverage these technological advances to gain a competitive market edge.   

Other Indian IT majors, from TCS to Infosys and Tech Mahindra, are also heavily focusing on AI. TCS’ generative AI leverages Google Cloud’s generative AI services to design and deploy custom-tailored business solutions. Infosys too launched its AI-first offering Topaz in May this year. Tech Mahindra also unveiled its gen AI studio to help enterprises bootstrap generative AI in April. 

Companies across the world too, from banks, healthcare companies to big tech, have accelerated their investments in AI in the last one year and especially after the launch of ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot by Microsoft-backed OpenAI took the world by storm in late 2022.