Accenture's Comments on AI Adoption, Pain Points a Positive for 4 Holdings
Pain points make for great investing opportunities, and we see one unfolding here, with these names positioned to benefit.
You're reading 0 of 1 free page.
Register to read more or Unlock Pro — 50% Off Ends Soon
Digging through comments from consulting firm Accenture (ACN) , we find another batch of supportive data points for AI adoption in the enterprise. This is a positive for four TheStreet Pro Portfolio positions.
During Accenture’s earnings call last night, the management team shared the following:
"In FY '23, we had 40,000 AI and data professionals with roughly 30 people working on a handful of GenAI projects with negligible revenue. Today, we have 77,000 AI and data professionals. We've worked on more than 6,000 advanced AI projects just this year, and we delivered meaningful revenue in FY'25…In 2025, tripled our revenue over FY'24 from GenAI and increasingly agentic AI to $2.7 billion, and we nearly doubled our GenAI bookings to $5.9 billion."
A few things about what Accenture referred to as “advanced AI”:
"Those numbers only reflect revenue and bookings specifically related to advanced AI, which is GenAI, agentic AI, and physical AI, and do not include data, classical AI, or AI used in the delivery of our services."
Accenture also offered some sobering comments about AI enterprise adoption:
"It is well recognized that advanced AI has taken the mind share of CEOs, the C-suite, and Boards faster than any technology development we've seen in the past 2 decades. At the same time, as reported widely, value realization has been underwhelming for many…"
But it also explained why that is:
"For most companies, the biggest gap between mind share and adoption is tech and org readiness. We're still in the thick of cloud, ERP, and security modernization. Data preparedness is nascent, and many companies -- and companies grapple with fragmented processes and siloed organizations."
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes one of the signals we shared with you back in November from IBM (IBM) :
"According to IBM, the primary barrier holding back enterprise AI isn’t the technology itself but the persistent issue of data silos. Ed Lovely, VP and Chief Data Officer at IBM, describes data silos as the “Achilles’ heel” of modern data strategy. Lovely made the comments following the release of a new study from the IBM Institute for Business Value that found AI is ready to scale, but enterprise data is not. The report, which surveyed 1,700 senior data leaders, found that functional data remains stubbornly isolated. Finance, HR, marketing, and supply chain data all operate in isolation, with no common taxonomy or shared standards."
To us, that smells of a pain point, and pain points cry out for solutions. In this case, that’s an opportunity for ServiceNow (NOW) , given its solution set that spans IT, employee, and customer workflows. It’s also focused on embedding AI into those solutions.
The same pain point goes for Palantir (PLTR) and Axon Enterprise (AXON) , which is also helping solve the issue of falling police force levels since 2019.
An while many folks tend to focus on Azure when it comes Microsoft (MSFT) , let’s remember the presence it has in enterprise software and what that could mean for Copilot.
Looking Ahead
When we move into the thick of the December-quarter earnings season, a key item we’ll be focusing on is what is said about AI adoption and usage - in addition, of course, to tabulating corporate guidance and mashing it against current consensus 2026 EPS expectations for the S&P 500. We suspect we will hear more comments in line with those from Accenture about the number of AI-related projects, but also about efforts to drive greater usage so the promises of AI can become tangible benefits.
In our view, those collected comments about AI projects, adoption, and usage will help erase questions and concerns about the AI and digital infrastructure buildout. Should those figures indicate an acceleration is either unfolding or poised to, it would go quite a way to bringing those AI stocks that have fallen out of favor in recent days back into vogue.
At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long NOW, PLTR, AXON and MSFT.
