Cognizant announced its OpenAI Frontier Capability Group on October 30, 2026, saying it brings together more than 25,000 professionals to deliver OpenAI products, including Codex and ChatGPT, to enterprise clients. The company named three initial work areas: software engineering with Codex, application modernization, and agentic customer operations. Cognizant’s announcement
The October announcement followed an earlier Codex partnership
Cognizant had announced a Codex partnership with OpenAI on April 21, 2026, saying it was embedding Codex in its Software Engineering Group. The October announcement introduced a broader delivery organization with additional workstreams, rather than the companies’ first public Codex collaboration. Cognizant’s April announcement
Cognizant also announced a separate Gemini-focused group with Google Cloud in October. That initiative has a different technology partner; NeoTeo covered it in its report on Cognizant and Google Cloud’s Gemini partnership.
Three workstreams cover software, modernization, and customer operations
Cognizant says the group will initially focus on AI-native software engineering with Codex, application modernization, and agentic customer operations across sales, service, and support. The announcement describes these as the group’s initial priorities.
For modernization, Cognizant describes its Application Modernizer as spanning reverse engineering legacy mainframe code through generating cloud-native code. Engineers are to review consequential decisions in that process. The company says it has modernized mainframe systems for more than 500 clients, a figure describing its experience rather than results across those engagements.
Headcount and learning badges measure different things
Cognizant’s more-than-25,000 figure describes the professionals aligned with the group. Separately, the company says more than 21,000 associates earned over 40,000 OpenAI badges by completing learning tracks. Those badges are a learning measure; Cognizant also says it is developing two credential categories, Frontier Certified Engineers and Frontier Business Operators. The announcement does not present the badge count as a certification tally for the group.
OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Dali Rajic described Cognizant’s dedicated practice and its use of OpenAI technology in its own operations as a way to help more companies turn AI into business impact. That is OpenAI’s view of the partnership; the workforce and learning figures are Cognizant’s reported measures.
