Accenture, one of the big IT companies, plans to invest $3 billion in the data and artificial intelligence vertical. This will double the number of employees in this vertical. Accenture plans to increase hiring for this segment as well as buy some companies.

Accenture said that the $3 billion investment will help companies across 19 industries. Many IT companies are incorporating AI into their products and services to take advantage of the growing trend of Artificial Intelligence (AI). A media report states that Accenture has also launched a new tool called AI Navigator. With this, businesses will be able to get information about better use of Artificial Intelligence.

In the last quarter of last fiscal, Accenture cut its annual revenue and profit forecasts. The company had said that it would reduce its workforce by about 2.5 percent. About 19,000 workers will be laid off from Accenture. This is another sign of weakness in the global economy. Due to this, the expenditure on IT services is being reduced in many sectors. More than half of the workers being laid off by the company will be from corporate functions that are not billed. Earlier, Accenture’s rival Cognizant had informed about slowing growth in IT services deals.

Difficulties have increased for the IT sector. About 60,000 contract workers have been retrenched in this sector in the country in the last one year. This industry is worth about 194 billion dollars. Lakhs of people have got employment in this. Indian IT companies get a major part of their business from abroad. Earlier this year, global IT company Microsoft decided to lay off thousands of workers. About 11,000 workers can be fired from Microsoft. This will have a greater impact on engineering and human resources divisions. Microsoft is under pressure to maintain the growth rate of its cloud unit Azure. For the past few quarters, the personal computers market has been hurt due to the recession and this has reduced the sales of Microsoft’s Windows and devices.