Tech consultancy Accenture has set out plans to lay off staff who aren't able to reskill on artificial intelligence amid a broader restructuring strategy which will see the company prioritize AI efforts.
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said in a call Thursday that as advanced AI becomes "a part of everything we do" and the global professional services company continues to invest significantly in the area, it expects employees to "retrain and retool" at scale.
"We are investing in upskilling our reinventors, which is our primary strategy," Sweet said. She explained that the company is "exiting on a compression timeline" people for whom reskilling isn't a "viable path."
Sweet said Accenture had already reskilled 550,000 workers on the fundamentals of generative AI and outlined a six-month $865 million business optimization program, which detailed costs associated with severance and headcount reductions.
"We expect savings of over $1 billion from our business optimization program, which we expect that we will reinvest in our business and in our people because it's so important for our future growth and so we expect to reinvest that while still delivering modest margin expansion," Accenture Chief Financial Officer Angie Park said.
Alongside cuts, the company is continuing to hire and has beefed up its AI talent with 77,000 employed AI and data professionals in 2025, up from 40,000 in 2023. Sweet said its also expecting to increase the company's headcount in the next financial year across markets including the U.S. and Europe.
"Our No. 1 strategy is upskilling, given the skills we need, and we've had a lot of experience in upskilling, we're trying to, in a very compressed timeline, where we don't have a viable path for skilling, sort of exiting people so we can get more of the skills in we need," Sweet added.
The company reported revenue of $69.7 billion this year, growth of 7% from the prior year. In an interview with CNBC's "Squawk on the Street," Sweet pinned this growth on massive client demand to deploy artificial intelligence across organizations.
"Our early investment in AI is really paying off," Sweet told CNBC. "We feel very good as we go into FY26 with the momentum we're seeing in our business which is driven by Accenture being the company that you really partner to make sure you can use advanced AI."
"Every CEO, board and the C-suite recognize that advanced AI is critical to the future. The challenge right now they're facing is that they're really excited about the technology and they're not yet AI ready for most companies," she added.
