HCL Technologies Ltd is accelerating its artificial intelligence strategy across service delivery, proprietary platforms, sovereign AI, strategic partnerships and talent development as enterprises increasingly seek secure, AI-driven digital transformation, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director C Vijayakumar said during the company’s Q1 FY27 earnings call.
The company said its AI roadmap is built around five strategic pillars aimed at delivering measurable business outcomes, accelerating innovation and strengthening HCLTech’s position in the global AI market.
AI embedded across client engagements
Vijayakumar said HCLTech continues to integrate AI deeply into its service delivery model through AI Force, its enterprise AI platform, which has now been deployed across 92 client accounts.
He highlighted a recent engagement with a Europe-based global automotive manufacturer, which selected HCLTech for a large-scale AI-led site reliability engineering transformation programme spanning engineering, production, commercial and corporate applications.
The programme combines site reliability engineering (SRE), AIOps, agentic AI, observability, automation and application lifecycle transformation within a unified operating model powered by AI Force.
Expanding proprietary AI platforms
The company continues to strengthen its AI intellectual property portfolio to help enterprises move beyond pilot projects to large-scale deployment.
During the quarter, HCLTech released AI Force 2.2, adding features such as Visual Studio Code plugin support, multimodal AI capabilities, long-term memory, configurable governance guardrails, AWS-native integration and enhanced observability.
The company also launched an enterprise-wide Agent Store, enabling the reuse of validated AI agents, workflows, connectors and tools across projects to accelerate AI innovation.
In addition, HCLTech introduced AI Force for Oracle, integrating Oracle Fusion Agent Studio with the company’s domain-specific AI agents and governance framework to speed enterprise adoption.
The company also launched three new industry-specific AI solutions covering store operations, order-to-cash automation and intelligent validation and quality management, taking its portfolio to 23 industry AI solutions.
Its VoiceOps AI platform received the Product of the Year award in the Intelligent Technology category at the NAB Show 2026 for transforming voice-based customer service operations.
Crossing 1,000 AI engagements
HCLTech said its AI Labs crossed a major milestone by delivering more than 1,000 AI engagements during the quarter.
The company also expanded its AI Factory capabilities through a strategic collaboration with Red Hat to accelerate enterprise AI infrastructure deployment.
A global technology company widened its engagement with HCLTech by awarding an additional contract worth more than $180 million to build AI data centre infrastructure using next-generation GPU technologies for training large language models and advanced AI applications.
The company also secured new projects in physical AI, including engineering the navigation stack for autonomous robots for a European manufacturer and supporting the development of a secure semiconductor module for an Indian research organisation.
Sovereign AI gains momentum
Vijayakumar said demand is increasingly shifting towards sovereign AI solutions as enterprises seek greater control over their proprietary data and intellectual property.
He said organizations are adopting AI architectures based on zero-trust principles, where enterprise data remains within secure boundaries while AI models are deployed through policy-driven inference gateways.
According to him, enterprises are increasingly favouring customised, domain-specific AI models over general-purpose foundation models to safeguard sensitive information while improving performance and reducing costs.
Strengthening AI ecosystem
To expand its AI capabilities, HCLTech recently announced a $150 million (around ₹1,290 crore) strategic investment in Sarvam, India’s full-stack sovereign AI company.
Vijayakumar said the investment combines Sarvam’s expertise in multilingual AI models with HCLTech’s global enterprise relationships, engineering capabilities and software platforms to create a differentiated AI ecosystem for governments and enterprises.
He said the partnership positions HCLTech to capitalise on the emerging sovereign AI market by developing industry-specific and client-specific small language models (SLMs), which offer higher efficiency, lower costs and greater accuracy for enterprise applications.
During the quarter, HCLTech also strengthened its partnerships with Google Cloud, OpenAI, AWS and Intel.
The company established a dedicated Gemini Enterprise Business Unit with Google Cloud and launched an autonomous finance platform powered by Gemini Enterprise. It also inaugurated AI Innovation Zones with Google Cloud in Santa Clara and Intel in Chennai to help clients develop and deploy AI solutions.
HCLTech was also added to OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber programme and achieved AWS AI Services Competency while integrating its AI agents into AWS Transform services for application modernisation.
Building AI talent
The company continued to invest in AI skills during the quarter, with around 24,000 employees participating in AI and generative AI training programmes.
The learning initiatives cover multiple proficiency levels, ranging from AI users to advanced AI builders, as HCLTech seeks to build a large-scale AI-ready workforce.