Bengaluru: The era of large-scale hiring in the IT industry is drawing to a close as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how companies operate, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Chairman N Chandrasekaran said on Tuesday.
Addressing the company’s 31st annual general meeting (AGM) in Mumbai, he said TCS would no longer recruit in the volumes seen in previous years as it increasingly integrates AI into its business.
While ruling out layoffs, he said the company would focus on acquiring the right talent while expanding the use of AI agents.
He predicted that over the next three years, the company would have as many AI agents as human employees.
“The day is not far when TCS will have half a million AI agents,” he said, indicating slowdown and selective hiring.
However, he expressed optimism that AI will also create new roles and opportunities. “That will be the nature of the transition we have to go through,” he said.
The company’s total headcount in FY26 declined by 23,460 to 584,519. For Q4FY26, the headcount increased by 2,356 employees. Last year, the company reported layoffs of about 12,260.
Pointing out five opportunities, Chandrasekaran said AI demands a redesign of how end-to-end work gets done, from supply chains to customer journeys. For a global bank, TCS has built an AI platform that manages the entire customer process.
Talking about AI agents, he said they don’t stay where they are. They learn, act, drift off course, and can even deteriorate. Getting them set up within an enterprise, training them on specific contexts, monitoring performance, governing compliance, and managing costs at scale will be both a big challenge and a big opportunity for established IT services firms.
“If maintaining applications was the defining annuity of the last era, governing intelligence will be the defining annuity of the next,” he further said.
The global enterprise IT industry, currently worth around $1.6 trillion, is forecast to hit $3 trillion within the next decade, effectively doubling. AI is raising the ambition of what technology can deliver across every sector, the company’s chairman said.
For TCS, AI revenues have been growing consistently. In the last quarter of fiscal 2026, TCS had an annualised AI revenue of US$ 2.4 billion, growing at 22.4%, he said, stressing the need to build a lot of AI skills.
“I have watched this industry navigate every major technology wave for decades. I have not seen one with this much to build,” he added.
The fiscal year 2026 began with positive developments, including the signing of the landmark India-EU trade agreement and the interim India-US trade deal. “However, by early March, the start of the West Asia crisis brought rising concerns about stagflation – falling output coupled with rising inflation. In this environment, businesses have been prioritising resilience, productivity, and trust-based decisions. Despite this evolving global landscape marked by economic fluctuations and geopolitical tensions, your company has delivered a credible performance,” he told shareholders.
Quote – If the company has half a million employees the day is not far when the company will have half a million AI agents – N Chandrasekaran