Accenture looks to scale Palantir AI services with Decho acquisition
Decho has joined Accenture for an undisclosed fee. The deal concludes as Accenture looks to expand its generative AI services into the health and public services sectors.
“Gen AI has enormous potential but needs the right platform and expertise to deliver real outcomes,” said Bryan Rich, global data and AI lead for health and public services at Accenture. “Decho is uniquely positioned to provide capabilities required in the most demanding industries with their combined Palantir and gen AI expertise, strong ecosystem relationships and proprietary products.”
Globally, Accenture is currently committed to a huge campaign of both ‘exiting’ and hiring talent, along the lines of whether the firm feels someone can adapt to using artificial intelligence in their work. In the UK and Ireland, Accenture has an approximate 15,000 staff – a presence now helmed by Matt Prebble – who previously led the firm’s data and AI business across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, with “the collective mission to help clients transform using data, analytics and artificial intelligence”, according to a release from the firm.
The deal for the UK-headquartered Decho aligns with Accenture’s strategic goal of enhancing service offerings in critical sectors, as well as the ongoing investment in data and AI capabilities to help clients navigate complex industry challenges. Looking ahead, Accenture says Decho will help its public and commercial sector clients gain data and AI advantage to “meet their critical objectives” and “reinvent their operations with more transparency and resilience.”
Expanded AI offering
Hosting a team of over 40 specialist engineers with expertise across Palantir platforms, Decho is a Palantir strategic alliance partner. Its primary focus is on helping organisations move AI projects from concept to production, rapidly and “with sustainable value from the outset” – as stated by a release from the two firms.
Decho is also said to have deep expertise in platform deployment, data model design, application engineering and capability development, as well as training to equip teams with the skills needed for long-term adoption and value creation. As a result, Accenture hopes it will enable further leveraging of Palantir software for scaling gen AI solutions, creating competitive advantage and embracing the new frontier of AI-driven productivity.
“Our engineers deliver on an urgent market need for expertise in leading-edge Palantir technologies and for working with clients on transformative solutions” added Anna Davies, co-founder and managing director at Decho. “By scaling our deep software understanding with Accenture’s data and AI capabilities, we can jointly help organizations integrate gen AI where it matters the most – and drive tangible and enduring outcomes.”
Palantir
Palantir Technologies is an American publicly traded company specialising in software platforms for data. Headquartered in Colorado, it was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Stephen Cohen, Joe Lonsdale, Alex Karp, and Nathan Gettings. Its software is used by governments around the world – including Palantir Gotham, which has been associated with geospatial predictions, and a controversial ‘predictive policing’ strategy in some European states.
Palantir Foundry was meanwhile used by NHS England to analyse the operation of the Covid-19 vaccination programme – though its role in the institution has also been criticised by Foxglove, a tech-justice nonprofit, which claimed, "Their background has generally been in contracts where people are harmed, not healed." Supporting the campaign, Clive Lewis MP said Palantir had an "appalling track record".
