It Unifies Cognizant's engineering, AI, industry capabilities for Physical AI across eight core verticals
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, 5 June 2026: Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) today launched an industry leading sovereign Physical AI Platform-as-a-Service, an integrated capability that moves autonomous systems from experimentation into core enterprise infrastructure. Built on the Cognizant Intelligence Spine, the offering connects disparate physical systems, including industrial sensors, IoT devices, factory automation and energy infrastructure, into a single coherent intelligence fabric, helping enterprises scale Physical AI across their operations.
Physical AI brings advanced multimodal intelligence, including vision, sensing, positioning and low-latency communication, into the operating layers of a business, allowing enterprises to direct physical action with greater visibility and control. After two decades in which industrialization centered on software, autonomous systems are now expanding into factories, warehouses, agriculture, healthcare and mobility, opening what the Grand View Research has estimated to be close to a trillion-dollar opportunity across service and utility robotics, autonomous vehicles and humanoid systems by 2033.
"In some ways, this is the iPhone moment for robotics and Physical AI," said Ravi Kumar S, CEO, Cognizant. "Advanced vision sensors, precise positioning, low-latency secure communication and new multimodal AI innovations are the constituents that bring AI into the physical world. Over the next few years, autonomous systems are expected to move from experiments to infrastructure. As an AI builder, our role is to help embed AI-powered digital intelligence into the physical and operating layers of a business, so enterprises can direct physical action with confidence. The enterprises we serve are at an inflection point, and we have built the cognitive foundation they need to move forward."
The shift is documented in Cognizant's New Work, New World 2026 study, which found that AI exposure in physical work has accelerated faster than long-range forecasts anticipated. In transportation, AI exposure climbed from 6% to 25%, and in construction it rose from 4% to 12%. The study also found that the most human-centered parts of physical work now have meaningful potential for digital enhancement, reinforcing the case for embedding AI directly into operational layers rather than leaving it confined to digital systems.
"Engineering and AI capabilities are distributed across companies and industries, and the opportunity in front of us is pervasive," said Vijay Narayan, Cognizant's newly appointed Global Head for Physical AI, who also leads the company's Manufacturing, Logistics, Energy and Utilities business. "Bringing them together lets us give clients a coherent way to put AI to work where their operations actually run. The differentiator is not a single model or sensor. It is the discipline to connect what physical systems observe, reason about it, act on it and keep that intelligence owned and governed by the enterprise as an asset that compounds over time. As AI builders, our role is to help embed intelligence into the physical and operating layers of a business, not to leave it confined to digital systems. We believe the companies that will lead the Physical AI era are not the ones waiting for proof-of-concept experiments to mature; they are the ones building governed, scalable systems into their physical and operational cores today, and that is what Cognizant is uniquely positioned to deliver."
Built on the Cognizant Intelligence Spine
The central challenge in Physical AI is no longer building capable use cases but scaling and connecting them. The proliferation of AI models and equipment makers across the ecosystem leaves enterprises without shared context, a unified reasoning layer, or institutional knowledge they truly own, a condition that leaves an enterprise able to sense everything yet reason about little of it. Cognizant's thesis is that this is an architectural problem.
The company's answer is the Cognizant Intelligence Spine, an industry leading sovereign institutional AI platform-as-a-service for Physical AI. The Spine sits between the physical edge, including sensors, cameras, robots and AI twins, and the agentic layer that reasons and acts, connecting physical AI systems with agentic AI into a single institutional mind that is designed for enterprise ownership and governance.
In physical environments, where failure carries safety, compliance or operational consequences rather than just a poor user experience, this governed and sovereign approach is increasingly critical for many enterprise use cases. Cognizant builds the sovereign layer that makes physical AI institutional: unified across every system, connected to agentic AI, governed by the client's rules and deepening with every decision, so each AI system deployed contributes to a unified institutional intelligence the enterprise owns, governs and expands over time.
Capabilities Across Eight Core Verticals
Cognizant is deploying this capability across sectors, aligning its engineering, AI and industry expertise to deliver production value at-scale. From predictive maintenance and mission-critical system integration to clinical operations and intelligent energy grids, the applications are as diverse as they are impactful. The Cognizant Intelligence Spine is available for enterprise engagements with immediate applicability across eight core verticals including:
