Tata Consultancy Services says 80% of its future hires will have digital and AI skills, as AI-led work reached 10% of revenue in the September quarter. The figures offer a snapshot of how the IT services giant is reshaping its hiring and business around AI, though the company has not broken out how much of its contract pipeline is AI work.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The Economic Times reports that TCS chief operating officer Arathi Subramanian told PTI that 25% to 30% of the 4,500 people hired in the second quarter were “pure AI”, while around 80% had “new age” skills. She said the company expects the same proportion of digital and AI-skilled hires to continue.
TCS chief executive K Krithivasan said AI-led work accounted for 10% of revenue in the quarter ended in September. He expects growing AI revenue to support profit margins. The company is cautious about labelling contracts as AI deals, he said, although some element of AI is present in virtually all its work.
Why it matters
TCS is one of the world’s largest IT services firms, so its hiring plans are a useful signal of which skills it expects clients to pay for. The comments also suggest that the shift is not simply towards recruiting specialist AI researchers: the company says it wants digital and AI skills across most new hires, and argues that experienced staff willing to learn can bring valuable knowledge of technology and client domains.
The numbers need their labels kept straight. “New age” is broader than “pure AI”, and AI-led work’s 10% share of revenue is not the same as AI’s share of new contracts. Krithivasan said TCS is conservative in classifying deals and did not give a proportion of its $9.6 billion in second-quarter contract value attributable to AI.
Our read
This is a substantial workforce signal, but not evidence that AI has already transformed most TCS revenue. The more interesting detail is the combination of a hiring target and a still-modest reported revenue share: building AI capability is a bet on where client demand is going, not a guarantee that the work will arrive at scale. For workers, the company’s message is that learning matters, but it leaves unanswered what training or career paths will make that promise real.
What to watch
- Whether TCS maintains the stated hiring mix in future quarters.
- How quickly its reported AI-led revenue share changes.
- Whether the company gives clearer figures on AI-related contract wins and the skills it is hiring for.
Discussion spark: If AI skills are becoming the default for new hires, should employers be expected to train existing staff to the same standard, or is that responsibility increasingly on workers?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (12 October 2026, 06:07 UTC)
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