WPP to Apply Kyndryl’s Agentic AI Framework in Expanded Partnership

Kyndryl and WPP on October 6, 2026 announced an expanded strategic partnership covering three areas: AI-enabled transformation of WPP’s business platforms and support model through Kyndryl’s Agentic AI Framework, an expanded marketing relationship naming WPP as Kyndryl’s preferred global marketing partner, and strengthened joint go-to-market initiatives.

WPP Chief Information Officer Dominic Shine said in the announcement that Kyndryl will help WPP accelerate enterprise transformation through AI-enabled operations, platform modernization and a simpler technology landscape, while WPP will support Kyndryl’s growth through the expanded marketing partnership and joint go-to-market innovation. “Together, we are investing in each other’s success, creating a relationship built on shared outcomes, trust and long-term value creation,” he said.

Business Platform Transformation

The Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework will be applied to modernize WPP’s application estate with what the companies described as intelligent support operations, faster issue resolution and reduced technical complexity. A new operating model will bring together workplace, cloud, infrastructure and enterprise services under a common, automated structure. By retiring legacy applications and accelerating adoption of strategic enterprise platforms, WPP expects to realize cost savings and efficiencies over time, and a portion of those savings will be reinvested into projects delivering further IT simplification, productivity and operational benefit. The model will also use Kyndryl Bridge, Kyndryl’s AI-powered open-integration digital business platform, to integrate, observe and orchestrate across WPP’s technology environment.

Jonathan Ingram, President of Kyndryl UKI, said that combining enterprise modernization, AI-enabled operations and customer growth capabilities creates a blueprint that helps WPP transform and innovate faster.

The companies said the work supports WPP’s Elevate28 strategy, which aims to modernize its enterprise technology environment to help it become a simpler, more integrated, AI-powered company. WPP unveiled Elevate28 on February 26, 2026 as a multi-year plan to move from a holding company structure to a single company organized into four operating units (WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions) across four regions, unified by the WPP Open agentic marketing platform. The plan targets £500 million of gross annualized cost savings by 2028, with total cash costs of approximately £400 million phased over two years, and runs in three phases: Stabilise in 2026, Build in 2027 and Accelerate from 2028 onward. WPP Chief Executive Officer Cindy Rose said at the time that the plan was intended to stabilize the business, return to organic growth and create capacity to invest in the future.

Marketing and Go-to-Market Expansion

Kyndryl named WPP its preferred global marketing partner, expanding the existing relationship beyond media, brand and creative strategy into a broader portfolio of digital, experiential and integrated marketing capabilities. The expansion also covers the enablement of an AI-powered Marketing Operating System built on WPP Open.

Kyndryl Consult and WPP Enterprise Solutions, previously VML Enterprise Solutions, will also continue joint go-to-market efforts to drive client growth through modernization and core business transformation, reimagining how customers engage with brands through AI, data and emerging technology. Those efforts build on the global partnership Kyndryl and VML announced on September 12, 2025, which paired Kyndryl Consult advisory services and Kyndryl Vital design and co-creation services with VML Enterprise Solutions’ experience transformation expertise.

Under the 2025 agreement, the companies said they would deploy joint expert squads spanning experience designers, AI experts, developers, and software and infrastructure engineers. Stated potential use cases included financial services, where the companies intended to explore using AI agents across Kyndryl’s Agentic AI Framework and WPP Open to orchestrate data for personalized banking, and retail, where they pointed to AI-driven omnichannel commerce and unified order management and customer relationship systems. Ismail Amla, Senior Vice President of Kyndryl Consult, said at the time that the partnership was about removing the friction that slows experience transformation engagements, while Jeff Geheb, Global CEO of VML Enterprise Solutions, said the companies were breaking down silos and simplifying customers’ path from initial idea to delivery at scale.

Existing Engagement and Reported Results

The expanded agreement extends an established technology services relationship. In a Kyndryl customer story documenting that engagement, WPP Creative Chief Information Officer Jamie McLellan said Kyndryl worked with WPP in a one-team model, adding: “We consider them an extension of WPP.” According to the customer story, WPP Enterprise Technology and Kyndryl established a partnership charter pairing WPP and Kyndryl focals at every level of IT decision-making, and the joint team defined 18 priority projects for its first year.

The documented first-year work included modernizing a server fleet of 6,000 by decommissioning 4,700 on-premises servers and migrating 1,000 servers to private cloud and Microsoft Azure public cloud, upgrading hundreds of wireless access points, moving the corporate device fleet to cloud-based management, and opening global service desks with real-time language translation. Kyndryl Bridge AIOps was deployed across the WPP Technology estate, with delivery teams using Red Hat Ansible playbooks to automate fixes and distribute them across the broader server estate. The joint team also created an Ambassador Network of more than 100 colleagues to support the cultural transition.

Kyndryl’s customer story reports that after a year the team had decommissioned more than 5,700 servers for multi-million dollar savings, resolved 56% of IT incidents without human intervention, and reduced monthly ServiceNow tickets from 40,000 to 5,000. It also reports a 90.5% customer satisfaction score in the first month of deployment, an average chat wait time of 17 seconds down from 13 minutes, and an estimated 300 metric tons of CO2 reduced through datacenter consolidations and cloud migrations.