Cognizant, the big tech company based in Teaneck, is making a huge move to fix a major problem: while businesses are spending billions on AI, they aren’t actually seeing the results they hoped for.
Cognizant believes there is a massive $4.5 trillion gap between what AI can do and what companies are actually getting out of it. They say this isn’t because the technology is broken, but because companies don’t have the right people or processes in place to use it effectively.
To fix this, Cognizant is building a new, 15,000-person team of “Frontier” experts. They’ll be split into two main groups:
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5,000 Engineers: Think of these as the tech experts who build and maintain the AI systems, making sure they actually work for the specific industry they’re being used in.
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10,000 Business Operators: These are the “managers” of the team. They’ll be in charge of making sure the AI and human employees work together smoothly to actually get the job done.
Essentially, Cognizant is saying that just installing AI isn’t enough. You need people who really understand your business to guide the AI, oversee it, and make sure it’s actually making money or saving time.
Cognizant’s CEO, Ravi Kumar S., put it simply: instead of just setting up the software and walking away, his company is now taking responsibility for the results. They’re training their staff to be the bridge between fancy AI tools and actual, measurable business success.
“Closing the AI outcome gap demands talent who not only understands a client’s industry deeply but can also reimagine the way work is structured,” he said. “By taking accountability for outcomes rather than stopping at technology deployment, we can help clients accelerate measurable results while managing risk.”
The “Frontier” model is designed to be cloud- and model-agnostic, allowing Cognizant teams to integrate AI into whatever tech stack a client already uses—whether that involves Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, AWS, NVIDIA, Salesforce or ServiceNow.
Cognizant’s Chief People Officer, Kathy Diaz, noted that the rapid evolution of AI has made 93% of jobs vulnerable to change, yet most organizations are still using workforce architectures designed for a pre-AI world.
“We rebuilt the architecture for the world we are in now,” Diaz said. “Industry domain depth is a core strength of Cognizant… We know how to take these powerful frontier tools and turn them into real business value.”
