EY Unveils Fruits of $1.4 Billion Artificial-Intelligence Investment

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Consulting firm EY said it recently completed a $1.4 billion investment into artificial intelligence, the latest among a series of peers to make a billion-dollar announcement regarding the rapidly developing technology. In addition to the $1.4 billion investment, announced Wednesday, the professional-services company said it has created its own large language model, EY.ai EYQ, and that it would train its 400,000 employee workforce on AI. EY declined to comment on the exact amount it would spend on AI going forward, but said that the amount is more per year than it has spent over the past five years.

Future investment includes continuing to refine its large language model. A few of EY’s peers have also made big-bang AI announcements over the past year. KPMG in July said it planned to spend $2 billion in AI and cloud services globally over the next five years.

Also in July, Accenture announced a $3 billion investment to expand its data and AI practice. PricewaterhouseCoopers in April said it planned to invest $1 billion in generative AI in its U.S. operations over a three-year period, and Deloitte last December said it was spending $1.4 billion on employee training on technologies including AI.

The EY.ai platform unveiled Wednesday includes new and existing EY products that now have AI embedded in them, such as EY Fabric, which helps companies manage their data, according to the company. It also has a library of use cases that essentially provide a path for how companies can safely and effectively deploy AI at scale, EY said. Andy Baldwin, EY global managing partner, client service, said the guidelines and frameworks, which include best practices for risk, governance and data management, are intended to help companies