Cognizant and Google Cloud launch AI engineering group with 18,000 staff

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) and Google Cloud announced an expansion of their partnership, including the formation of a Gemini Frontier Capability Group staffed by more than 18,000 Cognizant engineers, according to a press release issued Oct. 19, 2026.

The new group builds on a Gemini-focused practice Cognizant launched in April 2026 and is intended to help enterprise clients move AI deployments from pilot programs into full production. The group will initially focus on legacy modernization, developer experience, autonomous business process automation, and cybersecurity.

The group plans to use architecture built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Google Cloud's Model Armor security framework. Planned enterprise solutions include a retail Catalog Support Agent, a Healthcare Agentic Marketplace, and multi-agent Order-to-Cash workflows for manufacturing.

As part of the expanded partnership, more than 55,000 Cognizant associates completed the Build with Gemini workshop, which the companies describe as the largest single Gemini partner workshop held to date. Cognizant is also deploying Gemini internally to 100,000 associates this year, with plans to extend access to 200,000.

"Establishing our dedicated Gemini Frontier Capability Group lets our best frontier engineering talent focus entirely on getting frontier AI into production for clients," said Ravi Kumar S, CEO of Cognizant.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said the group and its skilling initiative "will help our joint customers accelerate the adoption of autonomous agents throughout the enterprise."

Cognizant cited one client case in which integrating Gemini AI models across a retailer's software development lifecycle resulted in a claimed 40% increase in developer productivity, a 30% reduction in time-to-market, and 35% cost savings.

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