EY has become the latest consulting firm to announce a new collaboration with Nvidia. According to the Big Four firm, working with the chip giant will help to deploy ‘AI agents’ to assist its global workforce.
Raj Sharma, EY’s global managing partner for growth and innovation, said of the news, “Agentic AI is fundamentally transforming business operations through automation and streamlined processes. This expanded alliance with NVIDIA will help EY clients capitalize on the opportunities through curated insights across tax, risk and finance. Having actionable insights powered by AI technology will impact whether businesses succeed or fall behind in this industry and our goal is to provide clients with the necessary tools and strategies to navigate the new AI era effectively.”
In the last year, a stream of consulting firms have clamoured to partner with Nvidia, the microchip producer whose business has long been seen as crucial to realising the long-touted potential of AI. Joining the likes of Cognizant, Accenture and TCS, EY’s collaboration with Nvidia is geared to develop and globally deploy the firm’s EY.ai Agentic Platform, on the full Nvidia AI stack.
A press release from EY suggests this system will be able to “respond real-time events, adapt to regulatory changes and drive smarter financial and risk decisions across global operations”. The platform will deploy over 150 specialised AI agents for 80,000 EY professionals, which it says will “increase productivity and streamline complex compliance requirements”.
When asked for additional information on what the AI agents would actually do, EY added, “We are initially deploying our AI agents to enhance our Sales and Use Tax (SUT) compliance processes, with plans to expand their use across additional areas of our tax services such as R&D, tax notices, and contracts. These AI agents are designed to streamline and automate critical tasks such as data collection, analysis, document review, and regulatory responsiveness. Their capabilities include processing invoices, extracting key data points, categorising tax-related information, managing important deadlines, and drafting preliminary responses to regulatory inquiries.”
The move comes as EY tries to move on from a difficult 2024. Despite shelving its controversial plans to split its audit and advisory wings in mid-2023, the Big Four firm still had a difficult financial year, thanks in part to becoming mired in a conflict of interest scandal in Australia – where its member firm was cross-examined for allegedly supporting the oil and gas industry’s lobbying efforts while being paid by the federal government for independent advice on its signature climate policy and gas emissions. A slowdown in consulting work meanwhile saw it shed large numbers of roles in its UK and US wings.
This has continued in 2025, with EY’s UK wing announcing its largest executive purge in decades. Employing around 20,000 individuals across the UK, it plans to cut 30 permanent partner roles at the top of its company. At the same time, while 150 roles in its consulting wing are being axed, the firm has now announced it will also be removing a further 30 roles in its legal business.
The move also comes as EY works to paint itself as a future-facing firm, on the front-foot when it comes to adopting new technologies like AI. But whether this spin satisfies clients, who will now be depending increasingly on AI agents as part of EY’s services to them, remains to be seen.