The CRN 2025 Solution Provider 500: AI Is Driving Reinvention Across The Channel

Solution providers play a critical role in helping businesses and organizations adopt and get the most value from leading-edge technologies – AI and generative AI being the most recent example. This week we present the CRN 2025 Solution Provider 500, the annual ranking of the largest solution providers by revenue with operations in North America.

Accenture Chair and CEO Julie Sweet, in summarizing the IT service giant’s fiscal 2024 results during a September earnings call, said customers’ increasing use of generative AI to reinvent themselves was becoming a major driver of Accenture’s growth.

“Reinvention requires a strong digital core,” Sweet said. “In FY25, a significant driver of our growth will continue to be helping our clients with digital transformation, including building out their digital core and then using it to drive productivity and growth. We see the advent of GenAI and its tremendous potential acting as a catalyst for reinvention.”

World Wide Technology co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh, meanwhile, has been transforming WWT into an AI and GenAI global powerhouse with a $500 million investment in technology, infrastructure and personnel for its AI lab. “We are an AI-first company,” Kavanaugh declared in an interview with CRN.

Cognizant has likewise taken steps, including through internal development and acquisitions, to position itself as a leading AI technology service provider, CEO Ravi Kumar S said during a February earnings call.

“We are rapidly applying AI across the organization to strengthen our operating agility while at the same time quickly sharing our learnings with clients,” he said. “We’ve identified more than 200 internal AI use cases, applying AI across three major dimensions: associate experience and productivity, enabling business operations, and to improve our technology and security landscape. These will remain important priorities in 2025.”

But while the surge in AI technology development and adoption holds great promise for the channel, solution providers have also wrestled with significant economic uncertainty over the last year – especially in recent months with major cuts in government spending and the Trump Administration’s rapidly shifting tariff policies.

In March, during Accenture’s fiscal 2025 second quarter earnings call, Sweet warned that the company could take a revenue hit from government cost-cutting. “As you know, the new administration has a clear goal to run the federal government more efficiently,” she said. “During this process, many new procurement actions have slowed, which is negatively impacting our sales and revenue.”

This “best of times, worst of times” business environment is the backdrop to the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, the annual ranking of the largest solution providers by revenue with operations in North America.

For the fifth consecutive year Accenture tops the Solution Provider 500 with reported revenue of $64.9 billion for its fiscal 2024.

NTT Data and Tata Consultancy Services continue to go back and forth for the No. 2 spot with NTT winning out this year with $30.02 billion in revenue in 2024 compared to No. 3 TCS with $29.04 billion in revenue.

This year multinational consulting and IT services company Infosys has been added to the Solution Provider 500, coming in at No. 8. That and the addition of HCL Tech at No. 16 knocks some of the perennial Top 25 companies down a couple of places. Kyndryl, the IBM spinoff that joined the list in 2022, drops out of the Top 10 this year to No. 11.

Capgemini, CDW, IBM’s consulting business, Cognizant, World Wide Technology and Leidos round out this year’s Top 10.

As is true every year, the 2025 Solution Provider list looks different because of channel acquisitions and consolidation. Most notable was World Wide Technology’s deal in January to buy Softchoice (No. 35 on the 2024 Solution Provider 500) for $1.25 billion.

This year’s Solution Provider 500 also introduces 26 newcomers including Infosys (No. 8), HCL Tech (No. 16), Tech Mahindra (No. 23), SEI (No. 40), New Tech Solutions (No. 70) and Trafera (No. 99).

The 2025 Solution Provider 500 collectively generated revenue of approximately $548.7 billion (using 2024/fiscal 2024 revenue figures), up 9.5 percent from the $501.2 billion generated by the 2024 Solution Provider 500 and up more than 15 percent from the $475.9 billion generated by the Solution Provider 500 class of 2023.

Joseph F. Kovar and Mark Haranas contributed to this story.