Cognizant faces existential AGI risk as a company whose entire business model is selling human knowledge workers to enterprises -- precisely the labor that AGI is purpose-built to replace at near-zero marginal cost.
Cognizant is one of the world's largest IT services and consulting companies, providing digital transformation, technology, and business process outsourcing services to enterprises across industries. Originally founded as an in-house technology unit of Dun & Bradstreet, the company leverages a global delivery model with the majority of its workforce in India. Cognizant helps clients modernize technology, reimagine business processes, and transform experiences through services spanning consulting, application development, cloud migration, data analytics, AI implementation, and business process services.
Cognizant serves large and mid-sized enterprises globally, with North America (primarily the US) accounting for approximately 75% of revenue. Key clients include major banks, insurance companies, healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and large manufacturers. The company typically has long-term relationships with large enterprises, with top clients spending hundreds of millions annually.
Cognizant's entire business model is providing human knowledge workers (IT consultants, software developers, QA testers, business process outsourcing staff) to enterprises. AGI directly replaces these workers. Software development, testing, IT infrastructure management, application maintenance, business process outsourcing, and consulting are all core AGI capabilities. Cognizant essentially sells the labor of hundreds of thousands of knowledge workers, and AGI is a direct substitute for this labor. This is one of the most directly threatened business models in the entire economy. Cognizant's customers are large enterprises across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail who outsource IT and business processes. These customers themselves may not disappear, but their need for outsourced human labor -- which is what Cognizant sells -- could evaporate. Enterprises will use AGI directly rather than hiring Cognizant's staff to write code, manage IT, or process business operations.