Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro have announced plans to deploy more than 200,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses (more than 50,000 licenses per company) to their companies in what Microsoft calls a new benchmark for enterprise-scale generative AI deployments.
The companies plan this transition to become the default tool for hundreds of thousands of consulting, delivery, operations, and software employees.
The announcement was made in Bengaluru on December 11, coinciding with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s visit to India. Momentum is growing across the developed world for agent AI, AI systems that do more than chat and perform multi-step tasks in business processes. The four companies hope to leverage their extensive experience from internal AI deployments to be recognized as AI advisors to their clients.
Why companies turn to Copilot
Readers will be familiar with Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI assistant built into standard workplace tools Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It aims to help users draft, summarize, analyze, and turn natural language queries into work-relevant output. Copilot combines a large-scale language model with organizational data from Microsoft 365 apps and Microsoft Graph, and the assistant works in the context of your files, meetings, and messages. Of course, this functionality is subject to the access controls already in place and defined by your organization.
For large organizations, it’s important to incorporate AI into your workflows. Companies don’t need to rebuild their toolchains to experiment with AI; they should start using AI with the software and documentation their employees already use.
Many benefits are practical and work-focused. Document faster, follow up on meetings faster, draft proposals faster, discover information from internal knowledge repositories better, automate repetitive tasks with agent AI, and more.
From co-pilots to frontier companies and agents
Microsoft uses the term “frontier enterprise” to describe organizations that are “human-led and agent-run.” There, employees work in collaboration with AI assistants and specialized agents who take over work processes.
The “Frontier Firm” status designation is consistent with Microsoft’s messaging at Microsoft Ignite 2025. There, the company explained that agents are reinventing business processes and expanding impact through human-agent teamwork.
Very simply, the company’s pitch is to move from “AI helps you write” to “AI helps you run workflows.”
Why IT service companies make public commitments
There are two reasons why the four companies are deploying this technology at such a large scale. The first step is to improve internal productivity. The deployment aims to integrate Copilot into consulting, software development, operations and client delivery workflows to improve productivity, the Times of India reported.
For large multinational companies, profits depend on delivery efficiency and knowledge reuse, so saving a few minutes from the daily tasks of tens of thousands of employees can yield meaningful benefits.
The second is client reliability. These consulting firms serve global companies, including many Fortune 500 clients. That means that internal operating model can, and perhaps should, become the customer’s strategy.
If consultancies can demonstrate mature governance, training, and measurable outcomes using Copilot at scale in their own operations, their messaging will be enhanced and they will be better able to sell similar transformations to potential and existing customers.
Investing in India with hyperscalers
Copilot’s announcement comes on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement that it would invest $17.5 billion in India between 2026 and 2029, with the funds earmarked for cloud and AI infrastructure, skills acquisition, and operations. The company describes this as its largest investment to date in Asia. Other big tech companies are taking similar steps. Reuters reported in December 2025 that Amazon/AWS plans to invest more than $35 billion in India by 2030 to expand its business and AI capabilities.
Taken together, these moves highlight India’s growing position as a large enterprise market and strategic hub for AI talent and cloud infrastructure. For India’s IT services leaders, Copilot is positioned as a way to stay ahead of the competition and define ‘AI-first delivery’.
(Image source: “View of the Goblin Indians on the Clinch River” by dmott9 is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.)
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