Publicis Sapient acquires full stake in Publicis Sapient AI Labs

Publicis Groupe has announced the acquisition of Publicis Sapient AI Labs, an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) research and development joint venture launched in 2020 in partnership between Publicis Sapient, Elder Research and Tquila. Publicis Sapient AI Labs will fully become part of Publicis Sapient, Publicis Groupe’s digital business transformation company. The acquisition will further strengthen Publicis Sapient’s data & AI capabilities and enable the company to develop innovative solutions across industries for a wide range of applications, such as generative AI, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision and autonomous systems.

Transforming the way enterprises interact and understand their customers, Publicis Sapient AI Labs combines Publicis Sapient’s more than 30 years of global delivery of its SPEED (Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering and Data & AI) capabilities with Elder Research’s 28 years of expertise in the multi-disciplinary fields of data science, AI and machine learning and Tquila’s record of hiring and rapidly scaling new technology services practices worldwide.

The highly experienced AI and data science professionals from Publicis Sapient AI Labs will become part of the company’s existing data and AI practitioners, together propelling client enterprises into the era of advanced analytics, data-driven insights and intelligent solutions. With organisations worldwide exploring the transformative potential of generative AI, Publicis Sapient will provide its clients multiple services to transform their businesses, including:

• Conducting fusion workshops and hackathons to develop a data & AI vision, uncovering value pools enabled by AI and building the supporting roadmap
• Prototypes and rapid proof of value for business use cases
• Training programs spanning prompt engineering to large language model development
• Collaborations with Publicis Sapient’s alliance partners, including Microsoft, Google and Amazon to train and fine tune Large Language Model (LLM) Foundation Models 

“The acquisition of Publicis Sapient AI Labs reinforces our continued investment in innovation, as well as our commitment to staying ahead of the AI curve,” said Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe. “Through its bolstered digital business transformation services, Publicis Sapient will help clients identify critical challenges and issues that AI and data science can solve to deliver world-class innovation.”

“As a digital business transformation company, Publicis Sapient actively partners with its clients to transform their businesses and build a competitive advantage through digital and data,” said Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient. “The acquisition of Publicis Sapient AI Labs will accelerate our generative AI offerings, playing a critical role in enabling our clients to apply data and AI solutions to solve complex business problems and build data-driven organizations at scale.”

“Elder Research is proud to have contributed to the success of Publicis Sapient AI Labs through our expertise in data science and AI,” said Gerhard Pilcher, CEO of Elder Research. “We’re thrilled by this acquisition and will continue to help organizations build their own analytic capabilities so they can successfully harness the power of data in the new information frontier.”

“We have a strong record of success in building technology capabilities through joint ventures with Publicis Sapient and Publicis Groupe. We’re delighted to have partnered with them on this occasion to rapidly scale an AI and data science capability at the forefront of data-driven innovation,” said James McHugh, Founding Partner, Tquila. “It has come at a critical time when many industries are developing AI and machine learning solutions to solve some of their biggest challenges.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.