At Naftiko, We track technology investment signals across 292 companies at Naftiko — APIs, AI, cloud, data, security, governance, automation, integrations. Scored and ranked.
EY ranks number one. Not among professional services firms. Across all 292 companies. Ahead of Citi, UnitedHealth, Morgan Stanley, Cisco, Visa, Nvidia, and Alphabet.
An accounting firm. Number one.
The numbers
EY scores 2,603 points. The professional services sector overall:
- EY: 2,603 (22.8% of sector)
- Accenture: 2,022
- Booz Allen: 1,447
- McKinsey: 1,435
- KPMG: 1,200
- PwC: 1,155
- Bain: 991
- Deloitte: 572
EY leads every category. APIs, AI, cloud, data, security, governance, services, integrations, containers, observability. Broad, deep, consistent.
Why professional services is ahead
Technology as a sector scores 44,840 points — but across 49 companies (avg 915 each). Professional services scores 11,425 across 8 companies (avg 1,428 each). Per-company investment density is 56% higher than technology.
The reason is structural. Professional services firms don't build one product. They build integration and transformation capabilities for every client, across every industry. A single firm like EY needs competency in financial services data platforms, healthcare interoperability, manufacturing automation, retail personalization, and energy management — simultaneously.
They also sit at the intersection of business strategy and technical implementation. They wire SAP to Salesforce, connect Workday to Azure AD, build data pipelines from Oracle to Snowflake. Their API and integration investment is not aspirational. It is operational.
What EY is doing differently
Cloud and data are the foundation. Cloud (219) and data (222) are where enterprises build the platforms AI agents will consume. EY is investing in the substrate.
Governance is a differentiator. 92 points — significantly ahead of the field. For an audit and compliance firm, this makes strategic sense. But it also positions them for AI agent governance.
Security is the highest in the sector. 139 points. In a world where AI agents are about to get API access to enterprise systems, security investment is the prerequisite for adoption.
Why this matters for developers
The professional services investment pattern maps directly to what AI agent infrastructure needs:
- Discover and inventory APIs across environments with hundreds of services
- Govern API access with identity propagation, policy enforcement, and audit trails
- Compose capabilities from existing APIs into reusable units of work
- Observe what agents are doing and whether integrations work
Professional services firms are the most integration-intensive organizations on the planet. They are investing accordingly. The question is whether the rest of the enterprise world catches up before the agents arrive, or after. For me, this is counter to what I read about professional services companies in mainstream team press, that they are irrelevant and going away.
You can explore the full signals data and run governed AI capabilities yourself using the open-source Naftiko Fleet. Feel free to email me personally at kinlane@naftiko.io if you have any questions.
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