Three of the world's largest consulting firms spent 2025 and 2026 rebuilding around AI137. Results split between the ledger and the headline. Julie Sweet's Accenture booked its strongest fiscal year in recent memory. The firm credited early AI spending, then moved to cut staff it judged unable to retrain2. Bob Sternfels' McKinsey reworked its own balance sheet in early 2026, handing $20 billion in partner wealth to an outside manager. Deloitte gave the year its counterexample twice5. It filed reports with AI-invented citations to two governments and paid for each10. Revenue and embarrassment arrived in roughly equal measure, often inside the same twelve months.
Accenture Prices Its Own Pivot
Sweet's firm closed fiscal 2025 on Aug. 311. Revenue, adjusted earnings and cash flow all beat its own guidance. Its Sept. 25 release put the reason in the headline: early AI bets drove the results9. Revenue reached $69.7 billion, its strongest showing in years. New bookings for generative AI work came to $5.9 billion across the year. Sweet said it plainly. "I am very pleased with our 7% growth in fiscal 2025, demonstrating our unique ability to deliver for our clients as they seek our help to reinvent and lead with AI." Look at the verb she picked for the client. They seek help to reinvent, which is the word Accenture sells.
Growth came with a harder edge. Accenture announced plans in September 2025 to lay off employees it judged unable to retrain on AI skills2. That flips the usual logic of reskilling. Rather than spend to lift every worker, the firm drew a line and moved the people below it toward the door. Net income rose 5.69 percent to $7.68 billion8. Its payroll held near 779,000 people. At that size, a small percentage is thousands of jobs. A firm posting record results while sorting its own staff by AI skill treats the technology as two things at once: the product it sells, and the test it gives its own workers.
Deloitte's Australian Refund
The firm's Australian arm delivered a report to the national government in July 2025, on a contract worth A$440,000, roughly $290,000310. A closer look turned up hallucinations. The report cited academic papers that were invented outright. It quoted a federal judge in words the judgment lacks. Deloitte filed a fixed version and agreed to a partial refund once the errors went public in October. The firm disclosed that Azure OpenAI had helped write it. On the errors themselves, Deloitte said only that "the matter has been resolved directly with the client".
Barbara Pocock, the Australian Greens spokesperson on the public sector, put the charge on the record. Deloitte, she said, "misused AI and used it very inappropriately: misquoted a judge, used references that are non-existent"10. Count what she names. A firm that sells AI to big companies had shown, inside its own product, the exact checking gap its critics point to.
Newfoundland Finds the Same Thing
Australia proved less isolated than one embarrassing headline. Deloitte wrote a health workforce plan for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, ordered in May 2025 on a CA$1.6 million contract5. At least four of its citations pointed to papers that were made up, according to The Independent on Nov. 22. The provincial government asked Deloitte to review its own document days later6. CBC News covered the request Nov. 24, calling the citations "incorrect" rather than fabricated, a softer word than Pocock had chosen weeks earlier. Two governments on two continents hit the same failure in separate Deloitte jobs. AI wrote, and the work reached the client before a person checked it.
McKinsey Reshuffles From the Top
McKinsey's 2026 shake-up ran quieter than Deloitte's public errors7. Bob Sternfels has led the firm as global managing partner since 2021. He oversaw a February 2026 decision to move $20 billion to Neuberger Berman, out of the arm that manages senior partners' own wealth, after a review. That move sits next to AI rather than inside it. Timing tracks the pattern here anyway. Big firms spent two years reworking far beyond the service lines clients see, applying to themselves the efficiency they sell.
Public McKinsey materials found for this piece said little about AI-driven headcount or QuantumBlack's current path7. That gap matches the disclosure questions raised across enterprise AI reporting this year. Sternfels also inherited a firm that cut 1,400 jobs in March 2023, years before AI entered the argument. A managing partner running a wealth handoff and whatever internal AI rework comes next sends a different signal than Deloitte's refunds or Accenture's sorting rule. Change reaches McKinsey through structure.
What Reinvention Actually Costs
Read across all three firms, the two years confirm a pattern from earlier tech cycles, running fast. The companies selling change pay for it inside their own walls before a client sees a bill. Accenture's staff met AI as a test to pass, rather than a promise to train everyone2. Deloitte's errors cost money, credibility, and a senator's words on the record, twice in two countries inside six weeks3510. Sternfels' quieter move suggests McKinsey picked internal rework over public AI announcements, which trades headline risk for less visibility into whatever job changes follow7. Reskilling is the word every firm uses in its marketing. Accenture made it mean sorting. Damage control is what it meant at Deloitte. McKinsey turned it into a money reorganization. Three firms sell the same change and run three versions of it at home.
Deloitte Canada answered on Nov. 25, a day after the province asked it to review the Newfoundland report11. Its spokesperson stood behind the underlying work and pointed to process over people. "We are fully responsible for the quality of our work, including the accuracy of report citations, and are committed to continually evolving our governance and practices around the use of AI and emerging technologies to help ensure accuracy, transparency and accountability," the spokesperson said. Read the order of that sentence. Responsibility comes first, the fix comes second, and the recommendations stand behind both. Pocock's charge points at the people who signed the report. Deloitte's answer points at the process that produced it.
Deloitte's AI-invented citations surfaced in two countries six weeks apart, in October and November 2025
Dates of AI-era moves at Deloitte, Accenture and McKinsey, May 2025 to February 2026
Each point marks one event on its date: magenta points are Deloitte's two government reports, blue points are Accenture's results and layoffs, and the gray point is McKinsey's wealth handoff.
Sources: Wikipedia [2]; Australian Financial Review [3]; The Independent (Newfoundland) [5]; Wikipedia [7]; U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [9]; Associated Press [10]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 2025 | Newfoundland contract. Newfoundland orders Deloitte health plan; A CA$1.6 million contract |
| July 2025 | Australia report. Deloitte delivers A$440,000 report; For Australia's national government, roughly $290,000 |
| Sept. 2025 | Accenture layoffs. Accenture plans layoffs tied to AI skills; The firm sorts its own staff by AI skill |
| Oct. 2025 | Deloitte refund. Deloitte agrees to partial refund; The firm disclosed that Azure OpenAI had helped write the report |
| Nov. 22, 2025 | Made-up citations found. Made-up citations found in Newfoundland plan; At least four citations pointed to papers that were made up, The Independent reported |
| Feb. 2026 | McKinsey moves $20B. McKinsey hands $20 billion to Neuberger; Moved out of the arm that manages senior partners' own wealth |
By the numbers
- Revenue of $69.7 billion: Accenture's fiscal 2025 total, up about 7 percent year over year9.
- Generative AI new bookings reached $5.9 billion across fiscal 20259.
- September 2025: the month Accenture announced layoffs for staff it judged unable to retrain on AI2.
- A$440,000, roughly $290,000: the Australian government contract whose report carried AI-invented citations310.
- Four fabricated citations turned up in Deloitte's CA$1.6 million Newfoundland and Labrador health plan5.
- Twenty billion dollars moved from McKinsey's internal investment arm to Neuberger Berman in February 20267.
- Roughly 779,000 people worked at Accenture as of 20252.
- Six weeks separated Deloitte's Australian refund story from Newfoundland's citation discovery35.
What to watch
Accenture's fiscal 2026 results answer the first question. Did AI-linked bookings growth hold through a full year of the layoffs announced in September 2025? Deloitte faces a second test. Will the firm change how it checks work, in public, or pay the cost quietly and move on35? McKinsey's next disclosure on AI-driven headcount, or on QuantumBlack, would close a real gap this reporting found in the firm's own materials7.
Sources
- Accenture Newsroom, "Accenture Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Fiscal 2025 Results," Accenture, Sept. 25, 2025, https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2025/accenture-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-fiscal-2025-results.
- Wikipedia contributors, "Accenture," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 4, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture.
- Edmund Tadros and Paul Karp, "Deloitte to refund government, admits using AI in $440k report," Australian Financial Review, Oct. 5, 2025, https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/deloitte-to-refund-government-after-admitting-ai-errors-in-440k-report-20251005-p5n05p.
- Edmund Tadros, "'Full refund': Senator slams Deloitte's 'human intelligence problem,'" Australian Financial Review, Oct. 6, 2025, https://www.afr.com/companies/professional-services/human-intelligence-problem-labor-senator-slams-deloitte-s-ai-bungle-20251006-p5n0ch.
- Justin Brake, "Major N.L. healthcare report contains errors likely generated by A.I.," The Independent (Newfoundland), Nov. 22, 2025, https://theindependent.ca/news/lji/major-n-l-healthcare-report-contains-errors-likely-generated-by-a-i/.
- Elizabeth Whitten, "N.L. asks Deloitte to carry out review after 'incorrect' citations found in $1.6M provincial health plan," CBC News, Nov. 24, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-deloitte-citations-9.6990216.
- Wikipedia contributors, "McKinsey & Company," Wikipedia, accessed Sept. 4, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company.
- stockanalysis.com, "ACN Stock Price and Financials," stockanalysis.com, accessed Sept. 4, 2026, https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/ACN/.
- Accenture plc, "Early AI investments help drive strong fiscal 2025 results," Form 8-K exhibit, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Sept. 25, 2025, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467373/000146737325000213/q4fy25earnings8-kexhibit.htm
- Associated Press, "Deloitte to partially refund Australian government for report with apparent AI-generated errors," Oct. 6, 2025, https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/deloitte-partially-refund-australian-government-070855665.html
- Justin Brake, "Deloitte breaks silence on N.L. healthcare report," The Independent (Newfoundland), Nov. 25, 2025, https://theindependent.ca/news/lji/deloitte-breaks-silence-on-n-l-healthcare-report/.