Unilever is aiming to improve operations, innovate faster and bolster consumer demand with the help of AI. To get there, the global consumer goods company is keeping the technology firmly planted within an overarching business strategy.
Starting with clear outcomes, aligning AI value to the business strategy and identifying how the technology will address problems can help create a common goal and minimizes siloes across the business, said Allen Bates, SVP, chief digital and information officer, Unilever North America.
“We don’t have an AI strategy; we have a business strategy that’s powered by AI,” Bates told CIO Dive. “That’s a fundamental shift in how we start with the problem [and] start with the outcomes.”
Unilever is reaping benefits from its approach to AI, with a boost in digital commerce and a 10% capacity increase at its manufacturing plant in Raeford, North Carolina, thanks to AI-powered digital twins technology, Bates said.
The company has also used AI to accelerate content creation and boost its brand image during major marketing events, such as the FIFA World Cup, CEO Fernando Fernandez told investors during the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call in July. The company’s Beauty AI Studio system, for example, powered the full content lifecycle and helped Unilever produce assets up to 30% faster.
As it advances its AI goals, Unilever plans to migrate enterprise apps and data platforms to Google Cloud as part of a five-year partnership that will let that company build an AI-first technology foundation.
The company is also working on frontier capabilities including agents with Microsoft, Bates said.
“Where AI was previously more of an assistant, I’m seeing it now become somewhat of a teammate where it can act, take some data and create a PowerPoint, take that next step,” Bates said. “That, to me, is really exciting, where you get out of the transactional assistant mode and into more of a teammate mode.”
Still, to reach Unilever’s ultimate AI goals, it begins with a strong foundation and aligning the technology with both the company’s business and people strategy, Bates said.
Starting with data and change management
Data is a first step toward successfully scaling AI, Bates said.
“AI loves context, context loves data, that’s where we start,” he said.
The company has invested in building reusable data products so teams across the business don’t have to start from scratch as AI scales across the business, he said. Codifying knowledge as the technology is democratized has also been helpful in sharing learnings across markets, Bates added.
Change management is another critically important element in the era of AI, he said, especially as tech leaders such as CIOs and CDIOs evolve from IT delivery leads to strategic business partners.
“Everything we build is in a multidisciplinary team,” he said. “Change is everyone’s job, in my view.”
As Unilever moves ahead with wider deployment, Bates said he believes the biggest opportunities ahead for the technology call for amplifying human potential and reimagining processes.
“That, to me, is really the opportunity to think through because technology on a bad process is still a bad process,” Bates said.
