Accenture Acquires Faculty to Accelerate AI Capabilities

Accenture has agreed to acquire Faculty, a UK-based AI services and products company known for its strong applied AI expertise and advanced decision-intelligence technology.The acquisition will expand its capabilities to help its clients modernise critical business operations using safe and reliable AI solutions with clear impact.  Founded in 2014, Faculty has a strong track record working with public and private sector clients to deploy AI solutions in the U.K. and other key markets. Its services—which include AI strategy, AI safety and the design, build and implementation of high performance AI systems—support the scaled and safe adoption of AI by client organizations.Faculty works with leading AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic to help ensure AI models are safe, and partners with the UK AI Security Institute and other organisations to follow safety norms of general-purpose AI models.

Following the close of the deal, Faculty’s 400+ AI experts will integrate with Accenture’s teams to expand AI capabilities for clients. Marc Warner, CEO of Faculty, will become Accenture’s Chief Technology Officer and a member of its Global Management Committee. Before founding the Faculty, Marc Warner was a Research Fellow in Quantum Physics at Harvard and served on the court of Imperial College London and as a member of the U.K.’s AI Council.

Faculty is known for its ability to apply AI in mission-critical settings. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Faculty built the UK National Health Service’s (NHS) Early Warning System. This was used daily by NHS Gold Command to accurately predict patient demand across the country, and to optimally allocate critical care resources to where they were needed most.

As part of the acquisition integration, Faculty FrontierTM, Faculty’s enterprise decision intelligence product, will join Accenture’s suite of products that help organizations make better, faster decisions by connecting data, AI models and business processes into a unified decision system. For example, Accenture and Faculty are already working together to support leading life sciences companies, such as Novartis, to use FrontierTM to transform the economics of clinical trial planning and execution.

Further, Accenture will also help leverage the Faculty's Fellowship Program, a highly structured early career training and placement program that helps promising STEM PhD and master’s graduates as well as post-doctoral researchers transition from academia to industry.

Building on the success of this program in the U.K., Accenture plans to extend the program globally to its people as well as to clients.The deal will close following standard conditions, including required regulatory clearances.