Kyndryl and WPP Expand Partnership, Tying Agentic AI to Marketing

Three areas of the expanded agreement

Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), a provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services, and WPP, which describes itself as the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands, announced the expanded deal in London on Oct. 6, 2026. According to the companies, it aims to redefine the traditional customer-supplier relationship.

The partnership centers on three areas:

• The transformation of WPP's business platforms and support model.
• An expanded marketing partnership that names WPP as Kyndryl's preferred global marketing partner.
• Joint go-to-market initiatives to drive customer growth through modernization and core business transformation.

Dominic Shine, Chief Information Officer at WPP, said the two companies are "investing in each other's success, creating a relationship built on shared outcomes, trust and long-term value creation."

Agentic AI to modernize WPP's technology estate

The Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework will be applied to help modernize WPP's application estate. According to the announcement, the aims are intelligent support operations, faster issue resolution and reduced technical complexity. This is meant to support WPP's Elevate28 strategy, which seeks to modernize its enterprise technology environment so it becomes a simpler, more integrated, AI-powered company.

The new operating model will bring together workplace, cloud, infrastructure and enterprise services under a common, automated operating model. By retiring legacy applications and accelerating adoption of strategic enterprise platforms, WPP expects to realise cost savings and efficiencies over time. A portion of those savings will be reinvested in projects that deliver further IT simplification, productivity and operational benefit.

Those projects will be further enhanced by Kyndryl Bridge, which the companies describe as an AI-powered, open-integration digital business platform used to integrate, observe and orchestrate across an entire technology environment.

Jonathan Ingram, President of Kyndryl UKI, said the combination of enterprise modernization, AI-enabled operations and customer growth capabilities creates "a blueprint that helps WPP transform and innovate faster to drive meaningful outcomes."

WPP becomes Kyndryl's preferred marketing partner

On the marketing side, Kyndryl has named WPP its preferred marketing partner. The existing relationship, which covered Media, Brand and Creative Strategy, will widen to include a broader portfolio of digital, experiential and integrated marketing capabilities. It will also include the enablement of an AI-powered Marketing Operating System built on WPP Open, which WPP calls its agentic marketing platform.

The companies say the expanded partnership across Enterprise Technology, Go-to-Market and Marketing creates a platform for innovation, growth and business transformation for both WPP and Kyndryl.

Joint go-to-market work continues

Kyndryl Consult and WPP Enterprise Solutions, previously known as VML Enterprise Solutions, will keep strengthening the joint go-to-market efforts first announced in 2025. The goal is to drive client growth through modernization and core business transformation, by reimagining how customers engage with brands using AI, data and emerging technology.

What it means

For WPP, the deal ties a technology overhaul to its Elevate28 strategy, with savings from retiring legacy applications expected over time and partly reinvested in further simplification. For Kyndryl, the agreement adds a marketing partner that also builds on WPP Open. The announcement gives no financial terms, contract length or timelines, and the companies' expectations on savings are forward-looking statements that may differ from actual results.