Cognizant has launched an industry-leading sovereign Physical AI Platform-as-a-Service aimed at advancing manufacturing and other industrial operations by integrating autonomous systems into core enterprise infrastructure, the company said.
The platform, built on the Cognizant® Intelligence Spine, is designed to connect industrial environments such as factory automation systems, sensors, IoT devices and energy infrastructure into a unified intelligence layer.
In a media release, Cognizant said the system is intended to help organisations scale Physical AI across manufacturing and other operational settings where real-world execution is critical.
“In some ways, this is the iPhone moment for robotics and Physical AI,” said Ravi Kumar S. He said the convergence of vision sensors, low-latency communications and multimodal AI is enabling “AI into the physical world,” adding that enterprises are at an “inflection point” as autonomous systems shift “from experiments to infrastructure.”
The company said the platform reflects a broader shift identified in its “New Work, New World 2026” study, which shows rising exposure of physical industries to AI, including transportation and construction, as automation increasingly extends beyond digital-only environments into operational layers such as factories and logistics networks.
Cognizant said the Intelligence Spine sits between physical systems and AI reasoning layers, enabling what it described as a “sovereign” and governed architecture where enterprises retain ownership and control of operational intelligence.
The company said this approach is particularly relevant in environments such as manufacturing, where system failures can carry safety, compliance and production risks.
“Engineering and AI capabilities are distributed across companies and industries, and the opportunity in front of us is pervasive,” said Vijay Narayan. He said the aim is to connect physical systems with AI reasoning so enterprises can “put AI to work where their operations actually run,” adding that companies leading in Physical AI will be those building governed systems into their operational cores.
Cognizant said the platform is being deployed across eight core sectors, including manufacturing, logistics, energy and utilities, healthcare, aerospace and defense, and retail, with use cases such as predictive maintenance, robotic process integration, autonomous inspection and supply chain optimisation.
The company said the initiative is part of its broader positioning as an AI systems builder, focused on embedding intelligence into industrial environments rather than limiting AI to digital applications.
