Coca-Cola Inks $1.1B Deal to Tap Microsoft’s AI, Cloud Tech

The Coca-Cola Company is tapping generative AI solutions from Microsoft to accelerate its digital transformation efforts.

The beverage company signed a five-year strategic partnership with Microsoft worth $1.1 billion to use its cloud and AI technologies, bigger than the one the companies struck in 2020 worth $250 million.

“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, Coca-Cola’s president and chief financial officer.

“Our expanded partnership with Microsoft is an important next chapter in Coca-Cola’s journey toward a digital-first enterprise powered by emerging technologies,” said Neeraj Tolmare, Coca-Cola's global chief information officer. “Microsoft’s capabilities help accelerate our adoption of AI to create incremental enterprise value.”

Coca-Cola has since migrated all of its applications to Azure and will explore using generative AI-powered digital assistants via the Azure OpenAI Service. The company is looking to build assistants that support customer-facing staff and streamline operations.

The partnership will also see the pair jointly test new technology solutions to create new generative AI use cases.

“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, Microsoft’s chief commercial officer.

Related:Coca-Cola Introduces Its First Ever AI-Created Flavor

“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.”

The beverage company was among the early enterprises that raced to embrace generative AI.

It was the first corporate client of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, who brought in Bain & Co. last March to help find customers.

Last September Coca-Cola used generative AI to develop an entirely new flavor launching Y3000.