Accenture

Accenture is valued at 155 billion dollars and employs roughly 700,000 people, and in September 2025 it announced it had eliminated 11,000 positions through automation, with further layoffs planned for staff it deemed non-retrainable. On 25 September 2025 it disclosed a «restructuration de 865 millions $» spread over six months, meant to realign its workforce toward digital and AI demand.

Two sources approach the firm from opposite directions. Donnellan frames consulting as facing a Kodak moment: shares of sector leaders fell as much as 30% over two years while the S&P 500 rose 50%, and in March 2025 the «Department of Government Efficiency» summoned ten large firms, Accenture among them alongside Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM and Guidehouse, to justify their fees. The economics that built the business are inverting. A British CFO describes a project costing 1 million dollars internally that could be outsourced to Accenture for 200,000; with machine learning, the same work now runs at 10,000.

The counter-argument comes from the comment thread around Ethan Mollick's exchange with roon: consulting survives because it sells contractual liability, not only competence. An AI cannot be sued, a firm can. The line that circulated most was "Curing cancer might be easier than replacing Accenture."

The same company appears in Lyzr AI's agent catalogue as a client, using a «YouTube to Shorts Generator» for media content. Buyer of the automation, and the thing being automated.