Accenture's shares climbed approximately 6% in premarket trading on Monday after the company announced a partnership with Anthropic focused on AI model safety evaluations. The collaboration, revealed on September 18, involves plans for both companies to invest at least $1 billion each over five years to expand independent AI evaluation capacity. Anthropic will also directly fund Accenture’s evaluation work, which will be led by Faculty, Accenture’s specialist artificial intelligence business. This initiative will involve evaluating AI models, conducting adversarial testing, assessing alignment with objectives, and testing safeguards to reduce risks.
The agreement is not exclusive; Anthropic intends to work with other evaluation providers, and Accenture can offer similar services to other AI developers. The partnership aims to address the lack of established industry standards for external evaluators in the AI sector, with the framework expected to evolve. This news comes as Accenture's shares were down roughly 30% this year due to market jitters over corporate IT spending and concerns that AI tools could impact professional-services firms.
Conversely, Novo Nordisk A/S shares plunged as much as 7.7% in early trading, disappointing investors who were hoping for more robust turnaround plans from CEO Mike Doustdar. The Danish drugmaker has lost its lead in the booming obesity market to Eli Lilly & Co. Despite pledging to launch more than five blockbuster drugs and deliver over $23 billion in new sales in the coming years, investors found the plans lacking in concrete details for recovery. Novo Nordisk was previously a frontrunner with a new generation of powerful obesity medicines.
