Accenture expects higher AI spending by clients as token costs fall

Accenture Plc. expects companies to spend more on automation tools as the costs of deploying them reduce, even as it passes more productivity benefits to clients.

While overall tech budgets have remained largely unchanged from last year, newer and cheaper AI models offer clients an incentive to spend more on AI, Julie Sweet, chief executive of the world's largest IT services company said.

“So, the way we think about the dynamic is, the more that token costs go down over the next couple of years, the more it's going to enable companies to use AI in more places and at scale. And to use AI, they need to change their processes, reinvent their work, build out that AI stack in order to really do it. And all of that is what clients are turning to us,” Sweet said at a post-earnings conference call.