Microsoft Corp. and The Coca Cola Company have entered into a strategic five-year partnership to help the beverage company with its technology transformation. For this, Coca-Cola has made a US$ 1.1 Billion commitment to the Microsoft Cloud and its generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) capabilities.
“Through our long-term partnership, we have made significant progress to accelerate system-wide AI Transformation across The Coca-Cola Company and its network of independent bottlers worldwide,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft. “We are proud to support Coca-Cola as it continues to embrace the era of AI and looks to solutions like Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot for Microsoft 365 to drive innovation across every area of its business.”
In a press release, Microsoft said that Coca-Cola has migrated all its applications to Microsoft Azure. Moreover, Coca-Cola has been working with generative AI for nearly a year and has already leveraged Azure OpenAI Service to cater to a variety of functions such as marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, etc. The company is currently exploring the use of generative AI-powered digital assistants on Azure OpenAI Service to help employees improve customer experiences, streamline operations, foster innovation, gain a competitive advantage, boost efficiency and uncover new growth opportunities.
“This new agreement builds on the success of Coca-Cola’s partnership strategy with Microsoft, showing our commitment to ongoing digital transformation,” said John Murphy, president and chief financial officer of The Coca-Cola Company. “Our partnership with Microsoft has grown exponentially, from the $250 million agreement we initially announced in 2020 to $1.1 billion today.”
Microsoft’s AI journey has taken a new and exciting turn ever since it came together with OpenAI to build one of the most sought after and formidable AI arsenals in the world. It has also been making billion-dollar investments to accelerate AI adoption and upgrade its digital infrastructure to keep up with the demands of GenAI, in markets as diverse as the Middle East and Northeast Asia.