Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar has outlined an ambitious strategy for 2026, positioning the $21 billion IT services firm as the bridge between massive AI infrastructure investments and actual business value that enterprises are still struggling to realize.
Kumar's focus centers on what he calls the "AI velocity gap"—a widening chasm between the trillions of dollars companies are pouring into AI infrastructure and the measurable returns they're actually getting from those investments. During the company's fourth quarter earnings call, he emphasized that AI technology is mature enough to deliver transformative value, but the methodologies and tools to harness it effectively are only now emerging.
Cognizant reported strong financial performance that underscores its positioning in this emerging market. For 2025, the company delivered revenue of $21.
11 billion, representing 7 percent growth year-over-year, with fourth quarter revenue reaching $5. 33 billion, up 5 percent.
The company signed 28 large deals throughout 2025, with total contract value climbing nearly 50 percent year-on-year. Looking ahead to 2026, Cognizant projects revenue between $22.14 billion and $22. 66 billion, representing growth of 4.9 to 7. 4 percent.
Kumar's message is clear and direct: AI won't magically generate value on its own. Technology adoption requires deliberate process reinvention and reimagination.
Enterprises cannot simply apply advanced AI to their existing outdated processes and expect transformative results. Instead, companies must fundamentally reimagine how they operate to unlock AI's potential.
The complexity of enterprise AI adoption has prompted Cognizant to train its entire workforce of 350,000 employees over the past two-plus years. The company has completely reimagined how it operates internally, shifting from traditional linear staffing models to what Kumar describes as an asynchronous autonomous software engineering model.
In this framework, associates delegate complex, high-value tasks to AI agent networks while maintaining oversight to ensure outcomes align with business objectives.
Cognizant's strategy rests on three key pillars that address different dimensions of enterprise AI value creation. First, the company targets the $4.5 trillion in U.S. labor value that AI is now capable of unlocking through automation and productivity enhancement. Second, it's building an integrated AI technology stack by melding its own intellectual property with strategic partnerships spanning Anthropic, OpenAI, Palantir, ServiceNow, and cloud hyperscalers.
Third, it's developing proprietary AI platforms and custom solutions that scale across its growing client base.
The business process outsourcing segment emerged as a particular bright spot in Cognizant's 2025 results, growing 9 percent year-over-year. This growth validates Kumar's thesis that BPO services will expand significantly for decades despite AI's rise, precisely because enterprises need comprehensive help modernizing legacy systems and operations.
The company is positioning itself not just as a transformation partner, but as an operator capable of taking over and managing client operations while continuously modernizing underlying systems and processes.
Kumar emphasized that closing the AI velocity gap demands heavy investment in context engineering—the process of infusing AI models with situational awareness, operating principles, work knowledge, and organizational history. This technical discipline is what transforms generic AI infrastructure into specific business outcomes.
Financial services showed particular strength in 2025, with revenue climbing 10. 5 percent year-over-year, while health sciences grew 5.2 percent. During the fourth quarter alone, the company inked a dozen deals worth $100 million each.
Cognizant's CFO Jatin Dalal noted that enterprise conversations are shifting from basic productivity improvements to genuine innovation. Cost-saving initiatives funded by AI efficiency gains are now being redirected toward future-focused investments in core platform modernization, cloud transformation, and regulatory readiness.
Specific GenAI applications gaining traction include claims efficiency automation, clinical documentation enhancement, and customer experience personalization.
Kumar stressed that this represents a massive tailwind for companies like Cognizant that can navigate the gap between legacy and modern systems. The disruption will expand the company's total addressable market across two pathways: first, applying AI to classical software environments to do more with less, and second, penetrating entirely new spending categories that classical software never reached.
— CEO Ravi Kumar S
The implications for enterprise IT spending are profound. Tech spending flowing through systems integrators is projected to surpass $1 trillion by the end of 2026, growing nearly 10 percent year-over-year.
AI services alone are expected to generate close to $600 million in revenue this year as enterprises seek guidance on integrating these tools into existing IT infrastructure. Cognizant's strong 2025 results and bullish 2026 guidance suggest the company is well-positioned to capture substantial share in this expanding market.
For enterprises wrestling with AI implementation challenges, Cognizant's earnings results validate a crucial insight: the biggest opportunity lies not in infrastructure itself, but in the bridge that converts infrastructure investments into measurable business outcomes. Watch for continued acceleration in Cognizant's AI services revenue, enterprise partnerships deepening around agentic AI development, and proof points demonstrating AI-driven business reinvention at scale throughout 2026.