Dive Brief:

• Publicis Groupe unveiled a Center of Excellence (COE) in partnership with Nvidia that supports clients as they reshape their enterprises around artificial intelligence (AI), according to a press release. 
• The initiative, spearheaded by digital transformation consultancy Publicis Sapient, has three core objectives: building an “AI factory” for developing diverse client use cases; upgrading Sapient’s agentic AI platform, Bodhi; and launching solutions that help clients establish the infrastructure needed to manage AI strategy.  
• The consultative approach speaks to the large opportunity agencies see in aiding brands along their journey with AI adoption. Publicis has pledged to spend hundreds of millions on AI as it tries to evolve into an “intelligent system.” 

Dive Insight:

The launch of Publicis’ Center of Excellence marks another step in the ad-holding group’s yearslong effort to refashion itself as a tech-enabled platform versus a traditional agency network. The offering speaks to the high demand among clients for AI-driven transformation, which can be costly to realize and cumbersome to implement regarding IT software and other infrastructure.

To that end, Publicis and its Sapient arm are deepening their work with chipmaker Nvidia, a leader in the current AI arms race. The idea is to blend Nvidia’s tech sophistication with Sapient’s transformation expertise. 

The COE represents a convergence of emergent AI technology with the consultative services agencies have ramped up as they look to stay competitive, not only with conventional category peers, but also consulting giants like Accenture, Deloitte and EY that have expanded their marketing divisions.  

Publicis plans to stand up an advanced AI factory that uses Nvidia’s DGX systems, as well as a full-stack solutions service that assists with different areas of AI lifecycle management, including data ingestion, training, refinement and inference. The aim is to provide a “a holistic approach to enterprise AI adoption,” per the announcement, bolstered by Nvidia’s AI Enterprise suite. 

At the same time, the partnership will soup up Bodhi, Sapient’s existing platform for creating AI agents. The goal is to produce virtual agents that can “reason, plan and act independently.”

“By leveraging NVIDIA’s advanced AI infrastructure alongside our Bodhi platform and digital business transformation expertise, we’re creating a new paradigm for enterprise AI adoption,” said Nigel Vaz, CEO of Sapient, in a press statement. “This partnership enables us to guide clients seamlessly through every stage of their AI journey — transforming strategy into actionable, autonomous intelligence that drives real business outcomes.”