Cognizant launches dedicated EMEA AI unit to accelerate enterprise adoption

Cognizant has announced the launch of a new EMEA AI Unit, in a move tit says will help organizations scale agentic AI deployments and move projects from pilot stages into production.

The dedicated unit will bring together advisory, engineering, and delivery capabilities to support enterprises across the region as they build, deploy, and manage agentic AI solutions tailored to their business requirements.

The launch forms part of Cognizant’s wider AI Builder strategy, which aims to help customers adopt AI technologies without being tied to a single cloud provider, AI model, or technology platform.

In an announcement, Cognizant’s president of EMEA, Manoj Mehta, said many organizations remain enthusiastic about AI but continue to face challenges translating early projects into measurable business outcomes.

“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,” he explained.

“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.”

Headquartered in New Jersey, Cognizant provides IT consulting, digital transformation, and technology services to enterprises around the world. In recent years, the company has increased its focus on AI-led transformation, developing services that combine consulting, software engineering, and managed delivery to help customers implement AI across their operations.

Turning AI into business outcomes

At the center of its new EMEA AI Unit is Cognizant’s Frontier Deployed Engineering (FDE) offering, a delivery framework designed to help organizations progress from AI strategy through to enterprise-wide deployment.

The framework consists of three service models: Foundation, Accelerate, and Transform. Foundation focuses on AI strategy, governance, technology selection, and early-stage prototypes, while Accelerate is designed to identify and deploy high-value AI use cases into production.

The third tier, Transform, supports wider business reinvention through multi-agent AI systems capable of automating end-to-end workflows.

Early impact across EMEA

The unit is already supporting several notable enterprise deployments across the EMEA region, according to Cognizant.

The company is currently working with one of Europe’s largest online fashion retailers to move AI use cases into production through an AI factory model that it said can reduce development cycles from months to days.

Elsewhere, the firm revealed it is also supporting a global pharmaceutical company with the use of multi-agent AI systems across research and development – including drug discovery, clinical trial design, and regulatory preparation.