Accenture launches AI Refinery, acquires digital twin technology

With only 12 industry agents available by the end of next month, Accenture plans to expand to more than 100 AI Refinery for Industry agent solutions by the end of the year.

As GenAI continues to drive tech investments globally, Accenture has launched AI Refinery for Industry. The AI Refinery for Industry is a collection of 12 industry agent solutions that can help organizations rapidly build and deploy a network of AI agents that can enhance their workforce, address industry-specific challenges and drive business value faster.

According to Accenture, these industry agents are codified with business workflows and industry expertise. This will enable the agents to accelerate the deployment of specialized, multi-agent networks ready to be customized with an organization’s data. Built with NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, the solution can reduce the time to build and derive value from agents from months or weeks to days.

Lan Guan, Chief AI Officer at Accenture said the launch of AI Refinery for Industry represents an expansion of the platform and Accenture’s collaboration with NVIDIA—which helps clients convert raw AI technologies and tools into scaled enterprise AI systems—providing a foundation to accelerate agentic functionality and reimagine functions and industry processes.

“Our new industry agent solutions will empower organizations to conceptualize agents and quickly prove their value, hitting the ground running on day one as a network of digital teammates.”

With Agentic AI being the next wave of AI, Justin Boitano, Vice President of Enterprise AI Software Products at NVIDIA believes the AI Refinery will provide enterprises everywhere with the ability to supercharge productivity with agents that can solve complex, multi-step problems.

“Built on the full NVIDIA AI software stack, Accenture’s AI Refinery for Industry democratizes access to advanced AI capabilities so that businesses can rapidly implement custom AI agents that drive efficiency and foster unprecedented innovation,” said Boitano.

While Accenture is only making 12 industry agents available by the end of next month, it also plans to expand to more than 100 AI Refinery for Industry agent solutions by the end of the year. Specifically, Accenture is hoping the agents will be able to address critical industry challenges.

Among the common challenges which Accenture is hoping its AI agents can address include automating key decision processes related to promotional activities to maximize revenue across product lines and markets, directly contributing to top-line growth.

Accenture is also hoping its AI agents will provide strategic insights, automate workflows, and enhance decision-making, helping marketers deliver faster, smarter and more consistent campaigns. This includes capabilities to centralize cultural, client, competitor and company data to craft relevant marketing strategies, and provide insights on program performance, sales growth opportunities and future planning optimization.

For industrial asset troubleshooting, Accenture believes that by integrating real-time data, signal correlation, automated inspections, and actionable recommendations, this system can help to maintain operational excellence by reducing downtime, enhancing decision-making, and transitioning autonomous maintenance from reactive to proactive.

Interestingly, the agents can also help with life sciences as a clinical trial companion. Specifically, as a clinical trial companion, AI agents can work with patients and clinicians to personalize trial plans, outline tasks and requirements from start to finish and provide guidance and motivation throughout a patient’s clinical trial journey. The AI agents can also be trained to answer trial-specific questions in real-time, offering clarity, support and a seamless experience, while reducing participant drop-out rates and driving greater success and value in clinical trials.

The Accenture AI Refinery for Industry is available on all public and private cloud platforms and will integrate seamlessly with other Accenture Business Groups to accelerate AI across the SaaS and Cloud AI ecosystem.

Accenture acquires digital twin technology for banks

While the Accenture AI Refinery has been making headlines at CES, in Asia Pacific, Accenture has acquired a digital twin technology platform for banks developed by Percipient. The Singapore-based fintech company has a deep experience in banking technology transformation, with the acquisition expected to help Accenture’s financial services client in the region.

In a media statement, Accenture stated that Percipient will enhances its existing banking modernization capabilities, enabling financial service clients in Asia Pacific to accelerate the reinvention of their core systems, foster innovation and drive growth.

Looking at the platform, Percipient will serve as a digital twin of banks’ legacy and modern systems. The platform is capable of integrating and unifying the data from each one into a single-real time hub. This in turn, reduces the challenges that many banks face around core modernizations by simplifying the application of data and enabling faster development of new products and services. Banks will also not have to overhaul existing systems or disrupt operations.

According to Accenture, Percipient’s digital twin solution further complements capabilities to help banks decouple from legacy systems and embrace cloud and AI-led banking services. Research from Accenture also revealed banks that shift to a modern, cloud-enabled digital core can attain up to 60% higher revenue growth rates and a 40% increase in profits.

For Masashi Nakano, Accenture’s Financial Services lead for Asia Pacific, as banks’ core systems are often decades old, there are layers of tangled code that are costly to maintain. Nakano believes this reduces business flexibility and requires highly specialized talent, making the need for transformation urgent.

“Percipient’s unique capabilities strengthen our existing core modernization offerings, enabling banks to efficiently unlock new opportunities for growth, launch new products faster, and deepen customer engagement through cloud, data, and AI,” said Nakano.

As part of the acquisition, Navin Suri, the founder and CEO of Percipient will be joining Accenture together with Percipient’s core technology leadership team.

“We have a shared vision to reinvent how digital transformation is achieved at financial institutions. By combining Percipient’s platform with Accenture’s core banking and technology capabilities, we can enable banks to more seamlessly transform their legacy systems and gain agility and speed, while lowering the risk associated with such modernization efforts,” said Suri.