Accenture has acquired UK artificial intelligence (AI) firm Faculty, bolstering its AI pool with 400 experts as it expands its services to help businesses deliver value from AI initiatives.
Through the acquisition, Faculty’s enterprise decision intelligence product, Frontier, will join Accenture’s suite of products that help organisations make better, faster decisions by connecting data, AI models and business processes into a unified decision system.
Accenture said it has been working with Faculty since 2023, supporting its clients in life sciences companies, such as Novartis, to use Frontier to transform the economics of clinical trial planning and execution.
Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture, said: “With Faculty, we will further accelerate our strategy to bring trusted, advanced AI to the heart of our clients’ businesses.”
Faculty was dubbed “the Vote Leave AI firm” by The Guardian for its work with former UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, and the Vote Leave campaign to sway public opinion on the UK 2016 referendum to leave the European Union.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Faculty built the NHS’s Early Warning System, which was used daily by NHS Gold Command to predict patient demand across the country.
Under the previous Tory government, Faculty worked with the AI Safety Institute to investigate techniques that could be used to overcome safeguards in large language models (LLMs).
In a Computer Weekly article published in 2022, Faculty’s CEO, Marc Warner, who will now become chief technology officer at Accenture, wrote about the drawbacks of data-driven decision-making. He stated that if data-driven decision-making worked, the immense growth in data storage experience in the IT industry should have led to vastly improved organisational performance. At the time, he predicted the future of AI would be in decision intelligence.
The combination of Accenture and Faculty creates a formidable team to accelerate the delivery of advanced AI and data solutions that drive sustainable growth Matt Prebble, Accenture
Commenting on the Accenture acquisition, Warner said: “Our vision has always been a world in which safe AI delivers widespread benefits to humanity. We have spent the last 10 years supporting our clients to bring this world about, step by step. As AI advances rapidly, the ambition of our clients is now, rightly, no less than the reinvention of their business. I am delighted that by teaming up with Accenture, we have everything in place to support AI transformation from start to finish.”
Accenture said it would also be taking on board Faculty’s Fellowship Program, which provides a structured early career training and placement programme to help PhD and master’s graduates, as well as post-doctoral researchers, transition from academia to industry. Building on its success in the UK, Accenture said it plans to extend the programme globally to its people as well as to clients.
Matt Prebble, head of Accenture in the UK and Ireland, said: “Businesses are under increasing pressure to deliver productivity gains from AI investments and strengthen competitiveness. The combination of Accenture and Faculty creates a formidable team to accelerate the delivery of advanced AI and data solutions that drive sustainable growth. Faculty’s unique position in the AI sector reinforces our commitment to supporting clients as they navigate change and seize opportunities in today’s economy.”
