A UK AI firm that advises OpenAI and other frontier AI models on AI safety, Faculty, is to be acquired by consulting giant Accenture as the professional services firm looks to integrate Faculty’s AI safety and strategy expertise into its AI-driven services.
The deal will see Faculty founder Marc Warner become chief technology officer of Accenture and more than 400 Faculty staff join Accenture, a move Accenture says will help its clients adopt safe and secure AI solutions and accelerate its strategy to bring trusted, advanced AI to the heart of clients’ businesses.
Founded in 2014 by Marc Warner in the UK, Faculty provides AI strategy and AI safety services, including checking the safety of models before release for clients such as Anthropic and OpenAI, and has worked with the UK government on projects to develop AI for teacher lesson planning and marking. The company has also been noted for its earlier work, including advising Vote Leave on the Brexit referendum. In 2021, Faculty raised £30 million (about $42.5 million) in growth funding from the Apax Digital Fund.
Accenture and Faculty have worked together since 2023, and Accenture expects the acquisition to assemble a powerhouse of talent to help clients make AI work in the real world, pursue sovereign solutions, and reinvent operations with transparency and resilience as organisations undertake AI transformation.
Julie Sweet, chair and CEO, Accenture, said: “With Faculty, we will further accelerate our strategy to bring trusted, advanced AI to the heart of our clients’ businesses.”
“Our vision has always been a world in which safe AI delivers widespread benefits to humanity. We have spent the last ten years supporting our clients to bring this world about, step by step. As AI advances rapidly, the ambition of our clients is now, rightly, no less than the reinvention of their business. I am delighted that by teaming up with Accenture, we have everything in place to support AI transformation from start to finish.” Manish Sharma, chief strategy and services officer at Accenture, added.
