Mars, PepsiCo Partner With Google Cloud on Enterprise-Wide AI Transformations
Mars is looking to automate workforce operations by providing associates with a suite of agentic capabilities, including AI assistants that can handle complex, multistep tasks across the company’s petcare, snacking and food and nutrition categories.
At the same time, PepsiCo is using AI to overhaul its IT tech ecosystem as part of efforts to advance the company's multi-cloud strategy.
Both companies are working with Google Cloud to achieve these goals.
This represents a continued partnership for Mars, where Gemini Enterprise becomes the primary AI operating system for the global workforce. Meanwhile, PepsiCo will leverage the same platform to solve complex business challenges such as supply chain management and go-to-market execution.
Mars: Building Specialized AI Agents
The company has been seeking out a solution to fragmented operations within its ecosystem of data and legacy systems.
By tapping into a unified hub, associates will be able to access and build AI tools from a centralized location, reducing any friction previously caused by disconnected applications while still preserving institutional knowledge.
Gülen Bengi, lead global chief marketing officer at Mars and global chief growth officer at Mars Snacking, said the unified platform puts business solutions at the core with technology as the enabler.
Also: Mars said it was "on the cusp’ of this technology last year
It creates a secure entry point for information across Mars' infrastructure so associates can access insights that were previously locked away in data siloes.
As an example, the company said a research scientist will now be able to query decades of internal nutritional studies, compared against real-time market data, to identify emerging trends — a process that was previously time intensive and manual, requiring months to complete.
The partnership builds on the company's proprietary AI platform, Mars IQ, according to Marina F. Bellini, global head of digital technologies at Mars and president at Mars Global Services.
Within marketing, associates are beginning to use the orchestration platform to generate creative briefs and preliminary brand assets. Additionally, the company expects to see use cases across sales and R&D, improving the speed of ideation and using data-driven foundations to formulate global campaigns.
The low-code and no-code environment will allow Mars associates to create their own specialized AI assistants, while governance standards will ensure the company maintains privacy and meets compliance requirements.
Mars will continue rolling out capabilities enabled by Gemini Enterprise through the remainder of the year.
PepsiCo: Optimizing the Business
PepsiCo's multiyear collaboration with Google will help the company scale global intelligence, expanding its data and analytics capabilities through the AI-enabled digital platform.
Through this, the company expects to elevate its decision-making capabilities, increasing accuracy while improving cost efficiency.
Pepsi's workforce will also benefit from AI-enabled workflows, reducing manual efforts and allowing associates to access insights more quickly.
Also: How PepsiCo is scaling AI personalization to fuel cross-sells and subscriptions at Gatorade
“As market dynamics and customer expectations evolve, PepsiCo is re-examining how we bring products to market and how we make decisions at scale,” Athina Kanioura, CEO, Latin America Foods, and chief strategy and transformation officer, PepsiCo, in a statement.
She added that the partnership has allowed Pepsi to model scenarios that "were previously impossible to run."
"The result is faster decisions, improved frontline experiences, and a step change in how we design and operate our business,” she added.
This follows several AI-focused relationships implemented last year, including an expanded partnership with Salesforce to deploy a digital labor platform and a collaboration with AWS on a cloud-based, agentic AI-first roadmap.
