OpenAI's announcement last Sunday to form "OpenAI Deployment" and acquire AI engineering firm Tomoro has raised market concerns about the competitive landscape in the IT consulting sector. Shares of Accenture PLC fell nearly 3% intraday on Monday, with Cognizant and Infosys declining approximately 5% and 4%, respectively.
However, UBS analyst team disagrees with this sell-off. In a report issued Monday, analysts including Kevin McVeigh reaffirmed their "Buy" rating on Accenture and maintained a $320 price target. UBS noted that OpenAI's acquisition of Tomoro adds only about 150 engineers. In contrast, Accenture boasts a workforce exceeding 700,000, with 300,000 to 400,000 being engineers and delivery personnel. This scale disparity means OpenAI lacks the global footprint and operational infrastructure required to independently execute complex, multi-year AI projects.
UBS further analyzed that the "ambition" in the AI deployment field is expanding the total addressable market for AI services faster than the market's internal digestion capacity. As a leading systems integrator, Accenture, with its enterprise-grade execution capabilities, is positioned to be a primary beneficiary capturing incremental AI-related work. The report anticipates that Accenture's contract value with emerging AI partners such as Anthropic, Databricks, NVIDIA, and OpenAI could more than double.
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