Accenture Buys into Decision Intell Firm Aera

Accenture has invested an unspecified amount in Aera Technology, which provides agentic decision intelligence for enterprises. The deal will see Aera's solutions combined with the consulting behemoth's AI-enabled supply chain capabilities for clients in a variety of sectors.

Mountain View, CA-based Aera combines agentic AI, a proprietary decision data model and real-time orchestration engines to support decisions across supply chain, procurement, finance and operations. The firm's agents continuously monitor changes, and improve supply and demand decisions, learning from every outcome. They can also execute actions across the enterprise.

The investment, through the Accenture Ventures division, promises to bring AI-led, real-time decision-making solutions to complex global supply chains in the consumer goods, high-tech, life sciences, mining, and oil and gas industries. According to Accenture, most supply chains still rely on fragmented, manual processes, with only 25% of firms in a study having started on the road to automating them.

Chris McDivitt, global lead for autonomous supply chains at Accenture, says the partnership 'will enable highly resilient, AI-enabled supply chains that can sense change before disruption hits, equip our clients' supply chain teams with recommendations how to act, and execute many of those decisions automatically under human oversight.'

Fred Laluyaux, co-founder and CEO of Aera (pictured) comments: 'The opportunity in front of us is extraordinary. Decision intelligence is enabling a new operating model where intelligent systems manage complexity at speed and scale, and people focus on strategy and performance. At Aera, we see this shift firsthand, and together with Accenture, we're accelerating how organizations scale this capability so they can operate with greater precision, speed, and impact.'

Accenture, currently employing some 786,000 people, is online at www.accenture.com . Aera can be found at www.aeratechnology.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.