PwC is collaborating with Google Cloud on a generative AI corporate tax solution, the company announced last week.
The solution integrates the professional services firm’s global tax analytics tools with Google Cloud’s BigQuery enterprise data warehouse and Vertex AI model developer platform. It will further integrate with SAP’s S/4 HANA ERP and other enterprise business applications, according to the announcement.
The joint effort is part of an expanding alliance around AI and cloud. In addition to launching the tax solution, PwC is building legal and healthcare solutions and enterprise security, compliance and sustainability tools using Google’s Gemini models and Vertex AI platform, the two companies announced Tuesday at Google Cloud’s Next ’24 conference.
PwC has a two-pronged AI strategy: develop capabilities for internal use cases while partnering with model builders to construct marketable enterprise solutions for customers.
The Google Cloud partnership, which encompasses a joint generative AI innovation hub the two companies launched Tuesday, is designed to drive both agendas.
“It’s a critical stepping off point and it’s a conversation that we've been having at the CIO and the board level about making these models available for our people to then go off and consume,” Dallas Dolen, global Google alliance leader at PwC US, said in an interview with CIO Dive.
PwC is already using the Gemini model family to ease complex, time-consuming processes in its legal and tax divisions, including contract and compliance document analyses, according to the Tuesday announcement.
“On the legal side, there are two angles,” Dolen said. “We have an active platform solution built by PwC India and our global tax and legal team built a number of proof-of-concepts at a hackathon about a month ago in Germany.”
PwC will offer the tax solution as a service or customers can embed it in their existing architecture, said Dolen. The company plans to supplement its AI solution portfolio with additional AI-focused managed services.
The Google Cloud alliance isn’t PwC’s first foray into generative AI partnerships. Last year, the firm tested a ChatGPT-based internal natural-language tool, called ChatPwC, and worked with model builders OpenAI and Harvey to develop a foundation model for its tax and legal services unit.
But the Google partnership runs deeper, Dolen said, pointing to rapid growth in PwC’s Google Cloud expertise.
“We’ve gone from about 400 part-time people who knew what Google Cloud was two years ago to 1,800 certified practitioners,” Dolen said. “The scaling has been really rapid for us.”
