More IT services firms partner with new-age AI start-ups
The collaborations signal that service firms are choosing to integrate AI-native tools into their own offerings
Amid growing concerns of new-age AI platforms undercutting the relevance and disrupting business of traditional Indian IT service giants, conventional IT services firms are increasingly partnering with such AI start-ups in mutually beneficial arrangements.
The collaborations signal that service firms are choosing to integrate AI-native tools into their own offerings both for employee productivity and to deploy as part of their projects. While this offers AI companies the scale that their tools need, it helps IT firms in more efficient project delivery and a selling point while landing mature clients.
Infosys recently announced a collaboration to deploy Devin, a productivity tool from AI start-up Cognition, across its global client base.
AI adoption
Similarly, TCS, in 2025, joined hands with Vianai Systems, a generative AI start-up to bring hila — an AI-based business intelligence platform for enterprise clients. Cognizant had also announced that it had tied up with Anthropic’s Claude to accelerate AI adoption for its enterprise clients. Even among mid-tier players, Hexaware recently partnered with Replit to give clients the tools to accelerate development cycles.
Gaurav Vasu, Co-Founder and CEO at UnearthInsight said, historically, ecosystem partnerships with SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc, have been a major revenue engine for Indian IT services firms, contributing 40-50 per cent of revenues, and agentic AI partnerships represent the next evolution of this model.
In terms of the economic value, Vasu said though AI agent-led partnerships account for a small share of revenues (5-8 per cent), their strategic importance is high as they allow service firms to deploy agents at scale inside enterprise workflows.
“Moreover, the ‘human-in-the-loop’ delivery model in which IT firms offer managed AI with the responsibility still resting with humans continues to be a priority for enterprises,” he added.
Security risks
Biswajeet Mahapatra, Principal Analyst, Forrester said that IT services firms act as “controlled execution environments” for AI tools while also helping enterprise clients navigate security risks such as data exposure and model vulnerabilities. According to him, these partnerships help improve productivity of the team and also help incorporate AI agents into core business processes.
Sanchit Gogia from Greyhound Research believes that services firms are being used as the bridge that converts experimentation into production scale. This is why AI agents are showing up inside large, multi-year transformation and managed services deals rather than being procured as standalone tools.
In a statement announcing the collaboration with Cognition, Infosys said that the company, after using Devin for the past six months and seeing significant improvement across its engineering quality, will integrate Devin within client delivery models deploying it in customers’ engineering environments.
Cognizant said company will align its engineering and platform offerings with Anthropic’s capabilities to enable clients integrate AI with existing data and applications, while reorienting work with human oversight.
Talent equation
As agents get plugged into project delivery, the impact on human work and hiring within the services industry has also been a point of debate.
Gogia from Greyhound Research believes that AI agents will reduce demand for people in specific layers that are repetitive, rules driven, and high volume. “That directly affects entry level and low complexity roles in testing, documentation, basic code conversion, and L1 style support,” he said.
Vasu said that large enterprise transformation programmes still require specialists in areas like system integration, legacy modernisation, security and compliance — domains where Indian IT firms specialise despite use of AI agents.
Published on January 16, 2026
