EY and Microsoft are putting more than $1 billion behind a bet that most companies still don’t know how to actually use AI. The five-year joint investment, announced on May 21 in London, is designed to help enterprise clients move AI projects from the “cool demo” phase into full-scale production systems.
The partnership pairs Microsoft’s Forward Deployed Engineers with EY’s industry specialists to build secure, sector-specific AI solutions. Target industries include finance, healthcare, energy, consumer and retail, government, and industrials.
EY is eating its own cooking first
Before selling AI transformation to clients, EY plans to transform itself. The firm is positioning as “client zero,” deploying Microsoft 365 E7 and agentic AI features across its global workforce of more than 400,000 employees.
EY Global Chair and CEO Janet Truncale framed the challenge not as a technology problem but a people problem. Most business leaders already expect AI to reshape work, she noted. The harder part is preparing people to actually use it.
