Dive Brief:
- KPMG said Wednesday that it plans to make a new $100 million investment toward enhancing generative artificial intelligence, data analytics and cybersecurity services that it provides through an existing partnership with Google Cloud.
- The expanded alliance, which is expected to drive $1 billion in incremental growth for the Big Four accounting and consulting firm, will include a focus on bringing Google’s Vertex AI and Gemini models to financial services clients, with the goal of helping automate “cumbersome” processes like fraud detection and commercial lending, according to a press release. The $100 million investment will be made over the next four years, a KPMG spokesperson said via email.
- “Integrating KPMG’s deep industry, data and AI expertise with Google Cloud’s cutting-edge AI technology is a powerful combination that has boosted our clients’ market advantage, and this expansion will scale the impact we deliver for clients,” Steve Chase, vice chair of AI and digital innovation at KPMG, said in the release.
Dive Insight:
Global consulting firms have been betting heavily on generative AI as they look to beef up the services they provide to enterprise clients.
Last year, KPMG unveiled a plan to invest $2 billion in Microsoft cloud and AI services over five years. The move was partly aimed at infusing data analytics capabilities supplied by Microsoft into KPMG’s audit process through the firm’s smart audit platform, known as KPMG Clara.
That effort came on the heels of an announcement by Accenture that it was investing $3 billion over three years in its Data & AI practice to help clients across all industries “rapidly and responsibly” advance and use AI.
KPMG said its latest move will allow it to collaborate with Google Cloud on “new solutions that will help clients solve complex business challenges, focusing on data modernization and responsible AI adoption across industries, with strong initial traction in consumer and retail, healthcare, and financial services.”
The investment comes as the firm is in the process of developing advanced GenAI agents for clients to “further enhance knowledge assistance and data management experiences,” according to the Wednesday release. “By building AI agents with Vertex AI and grounding data through retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques, KPMG can unlock the full potential of data for clients no matter which cloud provider they use,” it said.
Bookings for KPMG’s Google Cloud practice have increased 10-fold in the past two years, the firm said.
