Microsoft, EY to spend $1 billion on helping customers buy agentic AI

EY is building an EY forward deployed engineer capability through collaboration and training with Microsoft while keeping integrated EY-Microsoft teams in the field. Clients will experience a single combined team that combines engineering depth with transformation expertise. EY has served as client zero by embedding AI across its organization and validating ways of working with Microsoft technologies. After an initial Copilot trial with 150,000 users, EY is rolling Copilot out to all 400,000 staff using Microsoft 365 E7. The combined offering is fully integrated with shared governance and accountability. Initial services target finance, tax, risk, HR, and supply chain across multiple industries and public sectors.

""We're intentionally building the EY forward deployed engineer (FDE) capability through close collaboration and training with Microsoft, while maintaining integrated EY-Microsoft teams in the field," he said in an email. "Clients will continue to experience this as one combined team, bringing together engineering depth and transformation expertise.""

"EY has acted as "client zero" in this initiative, embedding AI in all facets of its organization while it validated ways of working with Microsoft's technologies. After an initial trial of Microsoft Copilot with 150,000 users, it is now rolling it out through Microsoft 365 E7 to all 400,000 staff."

""It gives EY a proving ground, not just a reference story. The firm can test AI across its own global workforce, professional services processes and regulated client delivery environment before taking the patterns outward. That gives it a sharper commercial proposition: not 'we understand AI', but 'we have suffered through the operating friction before you'. In enterprise technology, lived pain is often more valuable than polished optimism.""

Read at Computerworld