Cognizant announced Wednesday that its AI Lab has secured three new U.S. patents, pushing its intellectual property total to 65 U.S. patents and 88 international patents.
The new grants focus on the “building blocks” of artificial intelligence, specifically targeting human-AI collaboration, neural network efficiency, and distributed knowledge sharing. According to the company, these innovations are designed to help enterprises move past the experimental phase of AI into scalable, high-impact business applications.
The three patents, issued between February and March 2026, address technical hurdles in how AI models learn and operate:
- Adaptive Decision-Making (U.S. Patent No. 12,572,810): Enhances “prescriptors”—systems that recommend specific actions—by allowing human-designed strategies to evolve into high-performing policies as real-world conditions shift.
- Neural Network Efficiency (U.S. Patent No. 12,566,942): Automates the creation and tuning of “activation functions” (the core on/off switches in neural networks). This reduces the manual trial-and-error typically required by developers to optimize model performance.
- Distributed Intelligence (U.S. Patent No. 12,561,223): Improves how different AI systems share and combine learned knowledge using standardized metadata, facilitating better coordination across global teams.
“As enterprises scale AI, they need systems that are not only powerful, but also adaptable, collaborative, and efficient,” said Babak Hodjat, Chief AI Officer at Cognizant. “These patents represent advances in how AI systems learn and evolve, helping organizations move from experimentation to real business impact.”
The Cognizant AI Lab, led by Hodjat and Risto Miikkulainen (VP of AI Research and UT Austin Professor), specializes in “Decision AI.” This approach combines generative AI with multi-agent architecture and evolutionary AI to solve complex business problems.
The innovations developed at the lab power Cognizant’s Neuro® AI platform, which is currently used by Fortune 500 companies and non-profits to optimize decision-making and drive revenue growth. By securing these patents, Cognizant reinforces its position as an “AI builder” that provides the full-stack engineering expertise necessary to turn AI investments into tangible enterprise value.
