Welcome executives and professionals. Deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to 20,000 employees might sound like a major undertaking, but Accenture was just getting started.

Since the previous edition, we have reviewed hundreds of the latest insights in agentic and generative AI, spanning best practices, case studies, market dynamics, and innovations.

This briefing outlines what is driving material value — and why it’s important.

In today’s briefing:

• Accenture scales Copilot to 743,000.

• Enterprise agentic platform architecture.

• Unmissable agentic commerce brands.

• How to size a market with Claude Cowork.

• Deloitte’s AI questions for the C-suite.

• Transformation and technology in the news.

• Insights for Executive+ members.

• Career opportunities & events.

Read time: 4 minutes.

CASE STUDY

Accenture scales Copilot to 743,000

Brief: Accenture is rolling out Copilot to around 743,000 employees, making it the largest enterprise Copilot deployment to date according to Microsoft, with the program showing strong adoption and impact.

Breakdown:

• The rollout began with a pilot involving a few hundred senior leaders and select employees before scaling to 20,000 users.

• Accenture focused early on its data strategy, governance, access controls and how employees used Copilot in daily workflows.

• Adoption expanded in phases through tailored change programmes, regular communications and group training sessions.

• Viva Engage, a social networking app in Teams and Microsoft 365, also supported roll out, where staff shared use cases and tips.

Why it’s important: According to data involving 200,000 users, monthly active Copilot usage reached 89%, 97% reported completing routine tasks 15 times faster with Copilot and 53% reported significant improvements in productivity.

EXECUTIVE FEATURE

Google Workspace Intelligence: Yulie Kwon Kim

Brief: Enterprise AI Executive sat down with Yulie Kwon Kim at Google Cloud Next ’26 to discuss the launch of Workspace Intelligence. She leads Google Workspace products serving 3 billion users and 12 million customers.

Breakdown

• AI assistant value depends not only on reasoning power, but on understanding context and completing work effectively for users.

• Workspace Intelligence connects data across Workspace apps, giving Gemini grounded awareness of priorities and workflows.

• Yulie emphasized its differentiated integration and enterprise security, privacy and trust built-in across Workspace.

• Google announced 10 more Workspace updates, including AI note taking for any meeting across Zoom, Teams or in-person.

Why it’s important: Many professionals split time between finding information and deciding what to do next. Workspace Intelligence reduces that friction by combining Gemini reasoning with advanced embeddings across Gmail, Docs, Drive and Chat.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT & CASE STUDIES

Enterprise agentic platform architecture

Brief: QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey outlined a future-proof enterprise agentic platform architecture: a "glue layer" linking in-house systems, data and workflows with external agent ecosystems, and selective custom capabilities.

Breakdown:

• McKinsey proposes a composable, compostable model with clear partner, buy or build choices guided by three design principles.

• First, be relentlessly protocol-focused for interoperability; second, design for production from the start (e.g. evaluation, memory).

• Third, continuously integrate emerging capabilities such as GraphRAG to improve reliability, transparency and control.

• Throughout, McKinsey cites three client cases, including a financial services firm that built a digital factory of AI agents.

Why it’s important: Enterprises are shifting from generative AI pilots to agentic systems, yet many see high adoption with little value realized. Copilots and chatbots scale fast but rarely transform work end-to-end. Lasting returns come from workflow-embedded apps supported by scalable agentic capabilities.

MARKET & BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Unmissable agentic commerce brands

Brief: Accenture modelled 50,000 synthetic consumers across 24 countries to assess how agent-mediated commerce may evolve over the next 18-24 months, highlighting demand shifts, execution risks and emerging strategies for brands.

Breakdown:

• Agent-mediated transactions are expected to create net-new growth while increasing execution risks (image above).

• Most companies must become the "choice of agents," making their offerings easy for machines to find, evaluate and buy.

• Some companies, those with real category authority and proprietary data, may also become an "agent of choice."

• These go-to agents become repeat destinations customers and other agents use for advice, products and services regularly.

Why it’s important: Agentic commerce reshapes the unit economics of selling: Lower acquisition costs, fewer returns, less fraud, more predictable cash flow. The brands that don’t get it right may become invisible, passed over in milliseconds by a machine that has no reason to choose them.

AI-NATIVE PROFESSIONAL

How to size a market with Claude Cowork

Brief: In this guide, you'll learn to use Claude Cowork for end-to-end market sizing across research, analysis and deliverables. Start with existing company data or research, or let it work from scratch.

Step-by-step:

1. Describe the market you're sizing and define outputs such as a presentation, an Excel workbook, a source document with citations.

2. After your initial prompt, Claude may ask you questions, like market focus and geographic scope, then builds a plan in the sidebar.

3. Claude researches the market, applies the TAM/SAM/SOM framework, then creates three aligned deliverables.

4. Continue the conversation to drill into a specific segment, build a sensitivity model, or generate competitor profiles.

Best practice: Start another task while the analysis runs, review the plan before launch, and cross-check bottom-up calculations against analyst reports.

For the full guide, upgrade to Executive+ or The Boardroom. New guides in each edition to help you become AI-native.

BEST PRACTICE INSIGHT

Deloitte’s AI questions for the C-suite

Brief: Deloitte shared a guide featuring practical questions and deep dives to help senior leaders assess readiness, prioritise AI use cases and accelerate value realisation through stronger strategy and governance decisions.

Breakdown:

• The guide outlines key questions for leaders defining an AI roadmap and evaluating the workforce implications of AI.

• It covers risk and compliance, plus what CIOs, CDOs and CCOs should ask on deployment and vendor selection decisions.

• The first deep dive focuses on selecting the right technical architecture to scale AI quickly, securely and safely enterprise-wide.

• A second deep dive sets out five realities to help leaders decide whether to buy an AI system or build one internally (extract above).

Why it’s important: Tackling these strategy questions is not just about adopting technology; it is an end-to-end digital and business transformation roadmap that maximises ROI through C-suite alignment. Present these answers to the board to establish the foundation for teams to build on.

Monetizely released a 2026 pricing guide outlining how the SaaS per-seat model is dying as autonomous AI agents replace human labor.

Deloitte showcased a 2026 cybersecurity study showing state CISOs face mounting AI-driven threats while battling severe budget limits.

Bain shared insights from Google Cloud Next 2026, stating that enterprise AI is moving rapidly from agent creation to governance.

Omdia reported that China's cloud spending rose 26% in Q4 2025, fueled by a strategic shift from AI models to real-world agent growth.

KPMG highlighted a report on the AI sustainability paradox, noting that AI optimizes energy use but also carries significant social risk.

CDOTrends explored the quantum era, stating that leaders focus too much on encryption and miss broader architectural shifts.

OpenAI and Microsoft reset terms, freeing OpenAI to ship products on any cloud while Microsoft keeps a revenue share through 2030.

Meta’s $2B Manus deal was blocked by China, a warning shot for founders trying to move talent and tech outside Beijing's reach.

DeepSeek released preview versions of its V4 models with 1M-token context, Huawei chip support and lower pricing than frontier peers.

Google is investing up to $40B in Anthropic, including $10B now at a $350B valuation, and $30B more if Anthropic hits performance targets.

IBM introduced IBM Bob, AI partner moving enterprises from AI-assisted coding to production-ready software.

Google’s free 5-day AI Agents Intensive Course reached 1.5M learners last November and returns with updated content, speakers and capstone project.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

McKinsey - AI Director

Deloitte - AI Associate Director

Samsung - AI Strategy Leader

EVENTS

MIT Sloan CIO Symposium - May 19, 2026

Google I/O - May 19-20, 2026

Databricks Data + AI Summit - June 15-18, 2026

Reach enterprise AI decision-makers:

• 66% of readers are C-level executives or VP and Director-level leaders.

• 63.2% of the audience is based in the U.S., EU, UK, ANZ, and Singapore.

• Read by leaders at Microsoft, Deloitte, the Fortune 500, and more.

Guaranteed impression and custom sponsorship packages available, with post-send performance reporting.

The marketplace for trusted enterprise AI services, technology, and talent.

Transformation - Enterprise AI strategy, operating model, discovery, implementation, & managed services. Buy services. Sell services.

Technology - Enterprise AI technology from GPU providers and foundation models to agentic frameworks and beyond. Buy tech. Sell tech.

Talent - Executive and delivery talent, business and technical, from enterprise AI strategy to execution. Recruit Talent. Get Hired.

Conceived as a practical communication for executives Lewis Walker has worked with, this briefing has become a trusted resource for thousands of senior decision-makers shaping the future of enterprise AI.

We welcome your feedback.