IT and consulting firm Accenture has announced an extension of its collaboration with chip-magnate Nvidia. The latest part of their partnership will see Accenture expand its suite of services which it says can finally help clients put AI to use in Europe’s public sector.
The hype around AI stands at something of a contradictory crossroads at present. The technology’s allegedly infinite potentials are still greatly talked up by its purveyors, and reports from various consultants who have hitched their wagon to the AI phenomenon have churned out studies speculating that jobs are in fact being replaced by the thing they have insisted all their clients should invest heavily in. But at the same time, many consulting firms are also trying to sell AI-implementation services, and market them on the basis that very few companies have actually succeeded in deploying AI at scale.
Accenture describes its AI Refinery offering as an “AI foundation platform”, which it built upon Nvidia AI Foundry, Nvidia AI Enterprise, and Nvidia Omniverse. According to the firm’s website, the offering aims to “help companies turn raw AI technology into useful business solutions” – something which it says 96% of companies recognise the impact of – while suggesting that even though most companies are “in their second or third year of trying to deploy gen AI”, just “36% have scaled one significant gen AI solution”, an even smaller 13% have reported “creating significant enterprise-level value”, and a meagre 9% have fully deployed a use case.
Accenture unveiled its AI Refinery platform in October 2024 – since which it says it has filed 55 patent applications across 10 countries, while it adds that the technical achievements of its AI Refinery platform have been “presented and explored in 12 technical whitepapers”. Even so, corporate enthusiasm for the expensive technology seems to be waning – with 50% of senior business leaders admitting to EY at the start of 2025 that there was “declining company-wide enthusiasm for AI integration”. As such, the industry has pivoted quickly to the public sector – a traditional bulwark of technology funding – where governments less concerned with immediate returns on investment remain more interested.
In line with this, Accenture has further teamed with Nvidia to expand the AI Refinery platform for Europe – as its governments consider making the technology a cornerstone of their operations. This has seen the platform with “new sovereign and agentic capabilities”, which Accenture claims will help European organisations maintain control over critical data and apply innovative AI solutions – particularly crucial for companies and infrastructure industries concerned about data sovereignty.
As countries actively plan and build their own AI infrastructure, capabilities and industry in order to gear up their competitiveness in the sector, Sovereign AI could provide “a unique opportunity for Europe to reinvent its economy, drive productivity, resilience and competitiveness, and support its future growth,” according to Mauro Macchi, Accenture’s CEO for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
“The expansion of our AI Refinery platform enables European organisations to accelerate the deployment of AI agents, while addressing their sovereignty concerns,” Mauro added. “This is particularly crucial for the public sector and critical infrastructure industries, such as energy, telecommunications and defence.”
While many of these use cases remain hypothetical – as is the case in the private sector – Accenture is confident that Europe will account for up to 30% of the global sovereign AI market by 2030. To address this demand, the sovereign AI architecture in AI Refinery has solutions that cater to different market needs and priorities, offered as-a-service – including “configurable AI models tailored to national languages and contexts; a development and deployment platform that is hosted and managed within a nation’s jurisdiction; and secure, easy-to-customise solutions to meet the unique needs of the public sector and critical infrastructure industries.”
According to Justin Boitano, vice president for enterprise software products at Nvidia, this could help European states take advantage of “extraordinary new possibilities” offered by Sovereign AI, while “preserving the integrity of national data, infrastructure, and cultural identity across Europe”.
He added, “Together, Nvidia and Accenture are working with leaders across the public sector, energy, telecom and the continent’s industrial core – from manufacturing to retail – to build a resilient, innovative future powered by AI.”
While Nvidia’s value has risen to historic highs throughout the advent of the apparent AI era, the last year has been characterised by several huge dives in value. Shares of Nvidia plunged 17% to $118.42 on Monday, shedding $593 billion in market value, the largest one-day loss of any public company on record – following the release of DeepSeek in China, which delivers equivalent service to ChatGPT on more limited, less expensive chips. Pivoting to a market resistant to using Chinese technology for state purposes could present Nvidia with an opportunity to shore up its valuation, with state backing.