EY Unveils AI Platform EY.ai After a US$1.4 Billion Investment

The global EY organization has officially announced the launch of EY.ai, a comprehensive platform designed to facilitate the confident and responsible integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into businesses. This initiative is the result of an 18-month development process and a significant investment of US$1.4 billion.

Key Highlights

EY.ai’s Objective: The platform aims to merge human expertise with AI, leveraging EY’s vast business experience. It is designed to assist organizations in harnessing the transformative power of AI across various sectors, including strategy, transactions, transformation, risk, assurance, and tax.

Investment Details: EY’s US$1.4 billion investment has been instrumental in embedding AI into proprietary EY technologies, notably EY Fabric, which is currently utilized by 60,000 EY clients and over 1.5 million unique users. This investment also facilitated a series of EY technology acquisitions, bolstered by cloud and automation technologies.

EY.ai EYQ: Following a pilot involving 4,200 EY technology-focused team members, EY plans to release EY.ai EYQ, a secure, large language model. Additionally, EY will introduce tailored AI learning and development programs for its workforce. This initiative builds upon EY’s previous AI and data analytics learning programs, which have awarded over 100,000 credentials since 2018.

AI Ecosystem: EY.ai is establishing an AI ecosystem that encompasses a diverse range of business, technological, and academic AI capabilities. Notable alliances include partnerships with industry giants such as Dell Technologies, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, ServiceNow, Thomson Reuters, and UiPath. Specifically, Microsoft has granted EY early access to Azure OpenAI capabilities, including GPT-3 and GPT-4, to enhance EY’s service offerings.

AI Solutions and Services: EY.ai will be anchored by several AI-powered tools and services, including the EY.ai Confidence Index, the EY.ai Maturity Model, and the EY.ai Value Accelerator. Moreover, the platform will integrate generative AI into EY Fabric, which powers 80% of EY’s US$50 billion business.

Collaborative Endeavor: Andy Baldwin, EY Global Managing Partner – Client Service, emphasized the collaborative nature of EY.ai, stating that the platform aims to “deliver an unparalleled level of excellence in client service” by merging the capabilities of EY’s ecosystem collaborators with AI-enhanced teams.

Future Collaborations: EY is in discussions with the University of Southern California’s School of Advanced Computing regarding potential joint-research opportunities, following the university’s US$1 billion Frontier of Computing initiative.

Marketing Campaign: EY.ai’s launch will be accompanied by a marketing campaign themed ‘The Face of the Future’, set to go live in October. The campaign will focus on showcasing how AI can augment EY’s diverse services.

About EY

EY, part of the global Ernst & Young organization, is dedicated to building a better working world by creating long-term value for clients, people, and society. With teams in over 150 countries, EY provides services across assurance, consulting, law, strategy, tax, and transactions. Leveraging data and technology, EY addresses complex issues facing today’s world. While EY refers to the global organization, it encompasses various member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each a distinct legal entity. EY prioritizes trust in the capital markets and innovation through its diverse teams.

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EPC Blockchain among 16 Startups Selected to Join EY Incubator

Big four accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY) has selected 16 early-stage startups to join its EY Foundry Cohort 5 program to propel disruptive solutions in four areas: sustainability, new enterprise, people and wellness, and services of tomorrow.

EPC Blockchain, a Malaysian-based firm, is among those chosen, and it utilizes blockchain technology to record energy investments needed when crowdfunding energy projects. As a result, it tackles the challenge of climate change through public mitigation.

EPC Blockchain also enables small project developers to monetize carbon credits from energy projects.

From this month, EY will conduct the six-month incubator program virtually, with participants benefitting from $150,000 in Microsoft Azure credits to enhance their technology stack. 

Eight startups are from Southeast Asia, whereas the rest are from Australia. Per the announcement:

“They will gain exposure to a wealth of industry knowledge and experience, including access to EY industry insights, subject matter professionals and technology collaborators. The EY Foundry program takes no equity stake, with participating startups maintaining full ownership and control of the business.”

EY sees the partnership with startups as a stepping stone toward boosting the pipeline of entrepreneurial talent and enhancing the creation of future jobs and businesses. 

Farah Rosley, Malaysia Tax Managing Partner, Ernst & Young Tax Consultants, added:

“We are looking forward to collaborating with these disruptive technology startups to continue supporting the future of technology and business growth and improve how we service our people and help deliver greater value to our clients and the future of talent.”

Nurturing talent is emerging as a favoured strategy needed to spur innovation. For instance, Ripple, a leader in enterprise crypto and blockchain solutions, recently opened a key engineering hub in Toronto, Canada, to enhance crypto innovation and growth, Blockchain.News reported.  

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10% of Norwegian Adults Own Crypto, Double the Rate in 2018

Crypto ownership in Norwegian soil has been trending, because 10% of the adult population, representing 420,000 Norwegians, own cryptocurrencies, according to a study by Arcane Research and Ernst & Young (EY).

The latest figure is double the numbers recorded in 2018 because approximately 210,000 Norwegians owned crypto at that time. 

Source: Arcane Research, EY

The growth rate is even higher in the last three years because more than 255,000 Norwegians have joined the crypto space since 2019.

Therefore, the crypto ownership rate in the country has doubled from 5% to 10% since 2018. 

Source: Arcane Research, EY

In partnership with Norstat, a leading data collector for market research in Northern Europe, the online study surveyed 1,000 Norwegians aged 15 and above. Per the report:

“Younger adults are far more inclined to own crypto than older adults, with 19% of all participants aged 15 to 39 stating that they own crypto compared to 4% of those aged 40 or more.”

Female crypto ownership doubles 

After three years of stagnation, Norwegian female crypto investors have found the right footing because their ownership rate has doubled from 3% to 6% this year. 

Source: Arcane Research, EY

The survey noted that 63% of all female respondents disclosed that they purchased crypto for the first time either in 2021 or 2022.

Women are not being left out of the crypto space. More Turkish women were investing and trading cryptocurrencies as their crypto curiosity topped that of men, according to a recent survey by crypto exchange KuCoin. 

On the other hand, the analysis was undertaken by Arcane Research and EY indicated that 14% of all Norwegian adult men own crypto, up by 3% from 2021.

Moreover, Bitcoin is the most popular crypto in Norway. The study noted:

“Two-thirds of all Norwegian crypto investors own bitcoin. Ethereum is the second-most popular cryptocurrency, while XRP and ADA follow in third and fourth.”

Meanwhile, almost 67% of residents in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have shown interest in crypto investments, Blockchain.News reported. 

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EY Adopts Polygon Protocol & Framework on Ethereum Solution

Accountancy and consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY) announced Tuesday to provide blockchain solutions on the public Ethereum (ETH) blockchain ecosystem by utilizing Polygon protocol and framework.

In its press release, The London-based Big-four firm states that the partnership allows them to offer “predictable costs and settlement times” to enterprise users with increased transaction volume and also have an option to move transactions onto the public Ethereum, the firm said.

Paul Brody, EY Global Blockchain Leader, says their “shared priorities around open system and networks and the Ethereum ecosystem would make collaboration in this area much easier.”:

“Working with Polygon provides EY teams with a powerful set of tools to scale transactions for clients and offers a faster roadmap to integration on the public Ethereum mainnet.”

In addition, EY said the company is creating a private industry chain with Polygon, “leveraging new models for handling transaction verification to increase efficiency and reduce transaction costs” through an ‘optimistic rollup’ programme in the hope that to increase efficiency and reduces transaction costs.

Ethereum blockchain has long been undermined by congestions and the high cost of gas fees associated with transactions on its network. Last month, the upgrade of “EIP-1559”, indicating “London Hard Fork”, has contributed to a certain degree to fix this issue, but still need time to examine the results.

The company believes that “industry chains” would offer enterprises a closed system while maintaining a close alignment with the public Ethereum mainnet, making transitions to public networks faster and lower risk.

Ernst & Young is actively developing a crypto business. Last month, Its blockchain technology company has created non-fungible tokens arts pieces for the award-winning Italian film La Leggenda Di Kaspar Hauser.

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EY selects Polygon to scale its enterprise blockchain products on Ethereum

Announced on Monday, EY’s flagship blockchain services including EY OpsChain and EY Blockchain Analyzer will be integrated with Polygon, allowing transactions to be committed to Ethereum via the sidechain.

EY emphasized that its enterprise clients will have access to increased transaction throughput with predictable fees and settlement times using Polygon.

The firm also revealed it is working with Polygon to offer permissioned, private optimistic rollup chains. Rollups are a second-layer scaling solution that provides increased security and efficiency compared to transacting on the Ethereum mainnet. Paul Brody, EY Global Blockchain Leader, remarked:

Ernst & Young (EY), one of the ‘Big Four’ consulting multinationals, will connect its blockchain solutions to Polygon to mitigate the scalability constraints of Ethereum’s mainnet. 

“Working with Polygon provides EY teams with a powerful set of tools to scale transactions for clients and offers a faster roadmap to integration on the public Ethereum mainnet.”

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal praised EY for its commitment to the Ethereum ecosystem and open technology standards.

While EY has continued to iterate its layer-two zero-knowledge proof protocol Nightfall, the firm also helped launch the open-source Baseline Protocol in March 2020.

Related: EY publishes an Ethereum scaling solution to the public domain

Demand for Ethereum scaling solutions has surged in recent months amid the persistently high fees associated with transacting on mainnet. As such, the total value locked (TVL) on the Polygon network has surged from roughly $1 billion at the start of April to $8.5 billion today.