As enterprises worldwide accelerate their artificial intelligence adoption, PepsiCo has developed a distinctive approach that balances external technology acquisition with internal process ownership. The company’s strategy, articulated by Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer Dr. Athina Kanioura at Salesforce Dreamforce 2025, emphasizes owning core AI-augmented processes while strategically partnering with technology providers.
The Core Philosophy: Own the Process, Influence the Technology
PepsiCo’s operating thesis centers on maintaining control over its fundamental business processes while leveraging external AI technology. “We want to own our core AI-augmented processes, and we will not outsource,” Kanioura stated emphatically. This philosophy represents a significant shift from traditional outsourcing models that dominated previous digital transformation waves.
The company takes a firm stance with technology partners: “We buy your products. If we don’t influence your product roadmap, we are not interested.” This position now shapes how PepsiCo engages with major partners including Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, ServiceNow, Nvidia and Siemens. The beverage giant insists on defining release cycles based on its specific requirements rather than adhering to vendor-driven timelines.
Five Pillars of AI Transformation
PepsiCo anchors its AI initiatives to five stable business priorities that remain constant regardless of technology hype cycles. These pillars provide the foundation for all AI investments and implementations across the global organization.
Consumer Closeness: This priority focuses on strengthening direct B2C relationships through AI-powered insights and personalization. The approach enables PepsiCo to better understand and respond to consumer preferences across its diverse product portfolio.
Commercial Excellence: Covering sales and service activation, this pillar leverages AI to optimize commercial operations, pricing strategies, and customer engagement across PepsiCo’s extensive distribution network.
Operations: Spanning logistics and manufacturing across more than 300 plants and thousands of warehouses worldwide, this area applies AI to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance supply chain resilience.
Integrated Business Planning: This critical function connects commercial, financial and supply data across multiple planning horizons. The approach to integrated business planning ensures alignment between strategic objectives and operational execution.
Employee Experience: Focusing on tools, training and workflow optimization, this pillar uses AI to enhance productivity and job satisfaction across PepsiCo’s global workforce.
Building the Technology Foundation
PepsiCo’s AI strategy rests on a consolidated technology backbone that replaced approximately fifty disparate data lakes with a single global data foundation. The company runs a multi-cloud setup spanning AWS and Azure, with Google Cloud Platform joining the infrastructure mix.
The analytics layer partners with Databricks, while PepsiCo developed a proprietary application layer called DSX to ensure interoperability across systems. This integrated stack creates a unified data and application fabric accessible to every market in PepsiCo’s global operations.
This centralized approach addresses previous challenges where fragmented technology stacks slowed decision-making and increased operational risk. The consolidation enables better governance and control while maintaining the flexibility needed for local market adaptations.
The Governance Framework
PepsiCo maintains rigorous oversight of its AI initiatives through quarterly reviews involving the general counsel, audit committee, and board of directors. The company has established a global Responsible AI policy that sets guardrails for AI development and deployment, even in areas where regulatory frameworks remain underdeveloped.
The governance model prevents what Kanioura describes as “allowing 1000 AI pilots” by focusing on a core set of implementations that any business function can reuse. This disciplined approach contrasts with the scattered AI experimentation seen in many organizations, where AI agents can demonstrate both remarkable speed and significant failure risks without proper governance.
Standardization with Local Flexibility
PepsiCo standardized its top enterprise processes at a 70 percent common core across all geographies, while the remaining 30 percent accommodates local regulations, tax requirements, and market-specific considerations. Global process owners enforce this balance, ensuring consistency where it matters while allowing necessary local adaptations.
This approach mirrors broader industry trends where companies must balance standardization with localization, similar to how regulatory thresholds and requirements evolve across different jurisdictions.
Investing in Human Capital
PepsiCo complements its technology investments with comprehensive workforce development programs. The company launched a Digital Academy to provide every employee with fundamental understanding of cloud, data and automation concepts, followed by an AI Academy introduced eighteen months ago.
The learning ecosystem includes a private “PepGPT” environment with role-based certifications and job family-focused curricula. Even frontline roles like truck drivers receive applied AI training for dynamic routing, safety optimization, and route planning tools integrated with vehicle cameras and biometric systems.
Measurable Impact and Results
The investment in digital literacy and AI skills demonstrates clear business returns. A 2023 case study conducted with Aspen Institute revealed that PepsiCo’s Digital Academy now encompasses more than 11,000 learning assets and delivered 140,000 completed modules in its first year.
The program has generated 600 technical certifications spanning technologies from Azure to DevOps and Power BI. Participants show nearly double the likelihood of experiencing role or level changes, with attrition rates 18 percent lower than non-participants.
PepsiCo’s no-cost “myeducation” benefit offers over 100 credentials, from high school diplomas to advanced degrees, with upfront tuition coverage. Enrollment heavily favors in-demand digital fields, creating a pipeline of technologically skilled employees.
Strategic Partner Engagement
Kanioura emphasizes that technology partners must bring not only their solutions but also their engineering expertise to assist in development. This collaborative approach ensures that external technology integrates seamlessly with PepsiCo’s operational requirements while maintaining the company’s process ownership principles.
The strategy reflects a broader industry movement where companies seek deeper integration between internal capabilities and external innovations, similar to how leading technology platforms are incorporating specialized AI capabilities to enhance their core offerings.
Three Key Lessons for Enterprise Leaders
Kanioura’s experience yields three critical insights for organizations navigating similar build-with-partners dilemmas in their AI transformations.
Demand Influence on Vendor Roadmaps: Enterprises should insist on co-design and timed releases that align with their operational calendars, not just vendor schedules. PepsiCo makes this a precondition for major technology partnerships.
Consolidate Pilots into Platforms: Rather than allowing numerous disconnected AI experiments, organizations should focus on implementations that enable reuse and scale. PepsiCo converted 200 individual implementations into ten shared services, creating significant economies of scale and cleaner control surfaces.
Invest Equally in People and Platforms: Technical infrastructure alone cannot drive transformation. PepsiCo’s comprehensive learning portfolio, spanning from frontline roles to corporate teams, demonstrates that human capability development must progress alongside technological advancement.
The Future of Enterprise AI
PepsiCo’s approach represents a maturation in how large enterprises approach artificial intelligence. The company has moved beyond the initial fascination with AI capabilities to focus on sustainable, scalable implementations that drive tangible business value.
This evolution mirrors broader industry trends where organizations are becoming more strategic about technology adoption, recognizing that successful AI integration requires careful planning and execution rather than simply adding the latest tools.
The fundamental lesson from PepsiCo’s playbook remains clear: “We want to own the process.” This isn’t merely philosophical positioning but an operational imperative. When enterprises control the process layer, they maintain the flexibility to swap models, change vendors, and leverage technological advances without sacrificing strategic control or operational consistency.
