India’s largest software services company, Tata Consultancy Services, is assembling a specialized team of up to 8,900 engineers focused on artificial intelligence deployment — and it’s also on the hunt for AI-related acquisitions, according to two senior TCS executives who spoke with Reuters.
The move comes as investors grow increasingly worried that AI could shake up India’s $315 billion information technology services sector by shrinking demand for large engineering teams, cutting project timelines, and pushing down prices as clients look to capture productivity gains for themselves.
CEO K Krithivasan explained the company’s staffing target in an interview, saying, “We would be … ensuring that we have as many as 1% to 1.5% of our associates who could be what you would call FDEs.” Based on TCS’s headcount at the end of June, that percentage works out to somewhere between 5,900 and 8,900 employees. Krithivasan did not specify whether those positions would be filled through new hires or by retraining current staff.
These so-called forward-deployed engineers work directly alongside clients to speed up AI adoption and customize tools for specific business needs. The role has become one of the few bright spots for hiring in a tech sector otherwise feeling pressure from AI-driven efficiency improvements.
By building out this workforce, TCS is putting itself in competition with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft, all of which have been expanding their own forward-deployed engineering teams to help clients put AI tools into practice.
The Mumbai-headquartered firm is also weighing potential acquisitions in AI, data security, and cybersecurity — a shift from its long-standing preference for organic growth that largely held until late 2025.
CFO Samir Seksaria described the acquisition strategy this way: “We are looking at where we can find things which will help us enable or enhance our strategic positioning.”
Krithivasan pushed back on the idea that AI poses a threat to the outsourcing model, arguing that businesses still need experienced partners like TCS to integrate and roll out AI systems effectively.
“What you need is a deep knowledge of the customer environment to make it work. That is where we differentiate ourselves. This has nothing to do with cost arbitrage. It’s essentially because of the talent pool that we have built,” he said.
He added that companies are increasingly running multiple AI models at once and need partners to connect those systems with existing infrastructure and manage data flows.
Despite the optimistic outlook, TCS’s annualized AI revenue growth slowed to 13% in the most recent quarter, down from 28% the quarter before. Krithivasan said he hopes to see roughly 25% quarter-over-quarter growth over the long run, though he acknowledged the path won’t be a straight line.
TCS invests approximately $1 billion per year on talent development and making AI tools accessible across the organization, with an emphasis on training programs, targeted hiring, and recruiting specialists in AI-native technologies, according to Seksaria.
