Independent research firm recognizes Cognizant among the strongest performers in agentic services — earning both a top-tier Horizon 3 leadership designation and a SaS Star distinction for its progress toward Services-as-Software

April 7, 2026 — Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) today announced it has been named a Horizon 3 Market Leader and a SaS Star in the HFS Horizons: Agentic Services, 2026 report — the first-ever HFS Horizons study dedicated exclusively to agentic services. The report assessed 36 service providers across the agentic services value chain on their ability to help enterprise clients embrace agentic AI to drive measurable business outcomes.

Horizon 3, the report’s highest tier, recognizes market leaders that embrace the emerging paradigm of Services-as-Software™ (SaS) — providers that leverage agentic AI to redefine how work gets done and drive new sources of value through ecosystem co-creation. In addition to its Horizon 3 designation, Cognizant was spotlighted as one of just five SaS Stars across all 36 providers evaluated, recognizing companies demonstrating the strongest progress toward operationalizing agentic capabilities and optimizing human involvement through agent-assisted service delivery.

HFS highlighted Cognizant’s Enterprise Agentification framework, Agent Foundry and Neuro^® AI platform as evidence of end-to-end capabilities spanning strategy, design, build, integration and governance. The report also recognized Cognizant’s library of 350+ reusable agents, 75+ AI patents, ISO 42001 responsible AI management system certification and world record-setting vibe coding initiative involving approximately 53,000 participants as markers of sustained investment in agentic AI at scale.

“Cognizant combines deep AI research capability with a laser focus on the real needs of the enterprise, and enviable engineering and delivery scale. It’s a combination that makes them a clear market leader in this category” said David Cushman, Executive Research Leader, HFS Research.

"Agentic AI only matters if it changes how a business runs, not just how a team works," said Naveen Sharma, Senior Vice President and Practice Head, AI & Analytics at Cognizant. "We've earned our position as a SaS Star and Horizon 3 Market Leader in the HFS Horizons: Agentic Services, 2026 report by staying focused on that distinction: helping clients replace isolated use cases with governed, production-grade systems that deliver measurable results. That takes platforms, proprietary IP, context engineering, and real governance working together, backed by the kind of execution rigor that actually holds up at scale."

The recognition highlights Cognizant’s AI Builder approach as it is implemented across its client portfolio. In the United Kingdom, Cognizant introduced agentic reviewers for a major mutual fund and investment firm, automating FCA-compliant content audits—cutting approval timelines from weeks to minutes and increasing first-draft approval rates to 80%. Additionally, HFS Research reports that Xerox attributes Cognizant’s expertise, clear strategic roadmap and innovative tools with enhancing Snowflake modernization, reducing operational complexity, supporting compliance initiatives and enabling real-time insights.

Cognizant’s AI Builder stack connects what it takes to scale agentic AI across the enterprise: compute, cloud, model access, and human capital services. With 1,500+ experts dedicated to agentic services, and 170+ global delivery centers, Cognizant brings the talent and infrastructure required to move enterprises from pilots to production. The company’s partnerships with Anthropic, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Salesforce, ServiceNow and others convert AI investment into real impact across industries. According to the report, “Partners praise Cognizant’s repeatable AI productization, process/change leadership, industry depth, bold leadership bench, fast idea to client execution and strong data and transformation capabilities.”

To read the full report, click HERE.