Faculty CEO Marc Warner is set to take over as Accenture’s chief technology officer.
Consultancy giant Accenture has announced plans to acquire Faculty, a UK-based firm providing AI services to major global businesses, governments and public institutions.
The acquisition is set to expand Accenture’s AI capabilities, which the company has heavily invested in recently. Terms of the purchase were undisclosed.
Founded in 2014, Faculty works across major industries, including energy, infrastructure, law, defence, governments, education etc, offering its data analysis services to the likes of OpenAI, the NHS, Tide, Northern Powergrid and the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Faculty built the NHS’ early warning system, which was in daily use to predict patient demand across the country and to optimally allocate critical care resources.
The UK company competes in this space with the likes of Palantir and Quantexa. In 2021, the company raised more than £40m in a Series B round.
With the acquisition, Accenture is absorbing Faculty’s team of more than 400 AI native professionals, including its data scientists and AI engineers, the company announced in a press release today (6 January).
Meanwhile, Faculty’s CEO Marc Warner is set to become Accenture’s chief technology officer. Before founding Faculty, 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 UK’s AI Council.
“With Faculty, we will further accelerate our strategy to bring trusted, advanced AI to the heart of our clients’ businesses,” said Julie Sweet, the chair and CEO of Accenture.
The two companies have had a collaborative relationship since 2023, when Accenture was confirmed as a preferred implementation partner for Faculty’s Frontier software. Now, the software will join Accenture’s offerings.
“Together with Faculty we will assemble a powerhouse of talent helping clients make AI work in the real world”, commented Manish Sharma, the chief strategy and services officer at Accenture.
“This will help our clients stay competitive, pursue sovereign solutions, and reinvent their operations with transparency and resilience at a critical time.”
Accenture is also gaining Faculty’s fellowship programme, an early-career training and placement programme that helps STEM PhD and master’s graduates transition from academia to industry. The consultancy has said that it plans to extend the programme globally.
Much like other global consultancies and SaaS providers, Accenture has gone all-in on AI. The company cut hundreds of jobs in recent years as a cost-cutting measure as it raked up AI-related investments. Though it has since beefed up its AI talent, with the company adding a considerable amount of AI and data professionals – going from 40,000 in 2023 to 77,000 in 2025. It also has further plans to increase the company’s headcount.
Last September, Sweet told shareholders that the company was cutting staff that couldn’t reskill on AI.
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