Thierry Delaporte (Wipro)
Wipro has outlined its plans to tap into artificial intelligence (AI) with a US$1 billion investment into the technology over the next three years.
As part of that investment, the multinational technology services and consulting company is set to train all its 250,000 employees on AI fundamentals and responsible use of the technology over the next 12 months, as well as provide customised, ongoing training for staff in AI-specialised rolls.
It plans to develop a curriculum to map out the journey for different roles, culminating in the credentialising of employees through the Decentralized Identity & Credential Exchange (DICE) ID platform, and run hackathons and challenges to upskill employees.
The US$1 billion investment will also be put towards the multinational’s launch of Wipro ai360, an “AI-first innovation ecosystem” that utilises 30,000 Wipro experts in data analytics and AI with Wipro’s technology and advisory ecosystem from its four global business lines — Wipro FullStride Cloud, Enterprise Futuring, Engineering Edge and Consulting.
Wipro’s innovation hub Lab45 will be core to Wipro ai360 and is expected to provide clients with talent, training, scale, research and co-innovation capabilities.
“Artificial Intelligence is a fast-moving field,” said Thierry Delaporte, CEO and managing director of Wipro. “Especially with the emergence of generative AI, we expect a fundamental shift up ahead, for all industries. New business models, new ways of working and new challenges too.
"This is exactly why Wipro’s ai360 ecosystem places responsible AI operations at the heart of all our AI work. It’s meant to empower our talent pool and be ubiquitous across all our operations and processes, as well as our solutioning for clients.”
The investment is also earmarked to improve Wipros AI, data and analytics capabilities and foundation, research and development (R&D), platforms and its FullStride Cloud service, as well as build up new consulting capabilities targeting AI.
Additionally, Wipro will accelerate investments in “cutting edge startups” through Wipro Ventures and will launch a generative AI (genAI) seed accelerator program to provide training for genAI startups to become enterprise-ready.
