— Cognizant’s new OpenAI Frontier Capability Group brings more than 25,000 professionals together in a global OpenAI delivery organization
— Cognizant is scaling OpenAI across its own sales and customer success operations first, so clients can benefit from approaches tested at enterprise level
BENGALURU, INDIA | 29th OCTOBER 2026 | Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) today announced the formation of its OpenAI Frontier Capability Group, bringing together more than 25,000 professionals aligned to delivering OpenAI products, including Codex and ChatGPT, for clients. The group is designed to help enterprises apply OpenAI models to how they write software, serve customers and run day-to-day operations.
Access to frontier models is no longer what holds many enterprises back; what they lack is skilled professionals who know how to build with those models inside the systems their business depends on. Cognizant has been building that capability across the company, where more than 21,000 associates have earned 40,000+ OpenAI badges, each awarded for completion of learning tracks on OpenAI technologies. The new group adds an organization focused on building and supporting the operation of OpenAI-powered systems for clients.
That work is expected to draw on Cognizant’s Frontier workforce model, through which it is developing Frontier Certified Engineers and Frontier Business Operators credentialed directly by frontier-model companies.
Cognizant often tests new approaches in its own business before taking them to clients. Its sales and customer success teams already use a solution built on OpenAI models to find and pursue new opportunities. For clients, that means the group’s work can start from methods tested at scale inside a global enterprise.
“Over the last 50 years, every shift in enterprise technology has changed who builds the systems and how,” said Ravi Kumar S, CEO of Cognizant. “With Codex and ChatGPT, OpenAI is changing both at once. We are committing more than 25,000 of our people to bring that change inside our clients’ businesses. We started with our own, and OpenAI is beginning to reshape how we sell.”
“OpenAI is helping businesses fundamentally rethink how they operate, from the way they serve customers to how they get work done,” said Dali Rajic, Chief Revenue Officer at OpenAI. “By bringing together more than 25,000 professionals in a dedicated OpenAI practice and putting our technology to work across its own operations, Cognizant is helping more enterprises turn AI into meaningful business impact.”
Initial focus areas
The group will initially focus on three areas: AI-native software engineering with Codex, application modernization and agentic customer operations. Codex anchors the first and is designed to support engineers as they write, test and ship new code. In application modernization, the group will use Cognizant Application Modernizer, powered by OpenAI models, across the full lifecycle, from reverse engineering legacy mainframe code to generating cloud-native code. Engineers review every consequential decision, backed by Cognizant’s experience modernizing mainframe systems for more than 500 clients. In customer operations, the group will apply OpenAI models to sales, service and support, drawing on Cognizant’s experience using them in its own business.
Cognizant is already delivering for clients: at a global biopharmaceutical company, Cognizant co-engineered an OpenAI-powered enterprise assistant that brings search, content creation, translation and approvals into one place. It has handled more than 5 million conversations and cut content creation time by 60%.
Cognizant is one of a select group of Advanced partners in the OpenAI Partner Network. Its Codex hackathons in India and the Americas brought together more than 12,000 participants.
== ENDS ==
