Accenture’s CEO Declares the AI Hunger Games… With Boomers First on the Chopping Block

Julie Sweet just winked at boomers and said: “May the prompts be ever in your favor… or goodbye.”

Accenture, the final boss of consulting, pulled the pin on its latest restructuring grenade this week, telling all 779,000 employees: “Congrats, you’re all contestants in the AI Hunger Games. Reskill on ChatGPT or get yeeted into the job market.”

On yesterday’s earnings call, CEO Julie Sweet threw down the hammer: AI isn’t a side project anymore… it’s the whole damn company. And if you can’t keep up, the “exit door” has your name on it. She literally said they’re cutting staff on a “compressed timeline” when reskilling “isn’t a viable path.” Translation: Six months to prove you and ChatGPT are tighter than Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart, or you’re toast.

Looks like Julie Sweet’s late-night reading of Charles Darwin is paying off. Accenture has already “upskilled” 550,000 workers on generative AI 101. Another 77,000 now proudly call themselves AI/data professionals… nearly double from 2023. But with $865M earmarked for restructuring costs (aka severance), LinkedIn is about to look like the set of Independence Day after the aliens arrived.

(Source: Financial Times)

And put her obvious disdain for boomers aside, the move is working. Revenues jumped 7% to $69.7B this year, thanks to clients throwing money at AI projects like P Diddy when he sees baby oil 50% off at Target. Generative AI bookings alone hit $5.1B, almost doubling year-over-year. CFO Angie Park says they’ll save $1B from the layoffs and “reinvest it in growth.” Net effect: trim the herd, please shareholders, rinse, repeat.

But still, not everything’s hunky dory. Accenture shares faded 2.7% yesterday and closed at their lowest since November 2020. Apparently, demand for shorter-term consulting work is still in the gutter, and Uncle Sam’s new obsession with “government efficiency” (courtesy of Elon’s cosplay as Budget Batman) has incinerated federal IT contracts, cutting into one of Accenture’s most dependable paychecks.

But clearly, that’s background noise. Accenture is going full Skynet now. If you can’t sweet-talk ChatGPT like it’s your office spouse by 2025, start warming up with: “Welcome to Starbucks, can I get a name for the cup?”

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Starbucks as mentioned in the article.