The deal will see Faculty co-founder Marc Warner become CTO of Accenture.
A UK AI firm that advises OpenAI and other frontier AI models on AI safety is to be acquired by IT consulting giant Accenture.
Faculty, which also worked with Vote Leave on the Brexit referendum, was co-founded in 2014 by Marc Warner, its current CEO, who is also a former government AI adviser. The acquisition of Faculty comes as Accenture undertakes an aggressive AI push, as it looks to cash in on robust demand for its AI-driven IT services.
Multinational giant Accenture, founded in the US, said the acquisition would help its clients with “safe and secure AI solutions”.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Julie Sweet, chair and CEO, Accenture, said: “With Faculty, we will further accelerate our strategy to bring trusted, advanced AI to the heart of our clients’ businesses.”
Manish Sharma, chief strategy and services officer at Accenture, added: “Together with Faculty we will assemble a powerhouse of talent helping clients make AI work in the real world.
“This will help our clients stay competitive, pursue sovereign solutions, and reinvent their operations with transparency and resilience at a critical time.”
Warner said: “Our vision has always been a world in which safe AI delivers widespread benefits to humanity. We have spent the last ten years supporting our clients to bring this world about, step by step.
“As AI advances rapidly, the ambition of our clients is now, rightly, no less than the reinvention of their business. I am delighted that by teaming up with Accenture, we have everything in place to support AI transformation from start to finish.”
The deal will see Faculty’s 400-plus staff joining Accenture, while Warner, in addition to his role as CEO of Faculty, will become chief technology officer of Accenture.
Faculty’s services include AI strategy and AI safety. Its client roster includes Anthropic and OpenAI, checking the safety of their models before they are released, as well as working with the UK government on a project to help develop AI to handle teacher lesson plans and mark homework.
Accenture and Faculty have worked together since 2023.
In 2021, Faculty raised £30 million ($42.5. million) in growth funding from the Apax Digital Fund. It is thought to have raised around £40m in total.