Alaska Airlines said Friday it has hired global consulting firm Accenture to conduct a full audit of its technology systems, part of a broader push to improve reliability after two major IT outages in recent months. The review will include a top-to-bottom examination of the airline’s systems, standards, and processes.

The move follows a major outage last week that grounded flights for eight hours. The Seattle-based company said more than 49,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted and more than 400 flights were canceled across Alaska Airlines and its subsidiary Horizon Air. The outage was severe enough to postpone the company’s scheduled quarterly earnings call. 

Alaska said the outage was due to a failure at its primary data center and was not related to a cybersecurity incident.

In a new regulatory filing, the airline said it does not plan on rescheduling its third quarter call and will provide updated guidance for its fourth quarter in early December, “once the full financial impact of the recent IT disruptions is understood.”

A separate July outage, caused by a failure of a “critical piece of hardware” at Alaska’s data centers, was expected to reduce earnings by about $0.10 per share, or roughly $12 million.

Alaska said it has boosted IT infrastructure spending by nearly 80% since 2019, investing in redundant data centers and migrating more guest-facing systems to the cloud.

The airline operates a hybrid infrastructure, blending its own data centers with third-party cloud platforms, according to an interview last year with Vikram Baskaran, Alaska’s vice president of IT.

Alaska began migrating workloads to Microsoft Azure around 2015 and continues to maintain its own data centers for critical workloads, according to the interview.

Earlier this week, Alaska had another IT disruption, but this time blamed Microsoft Azure, which itself had an outage that temporarily disrupted operations for customers worldwide. The disruption impacted Alaska’s subsidiary Hawaiian Airlines.

The Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute, in collaboration with Accenture, unveiled a research report on AI investment entitled “Rebalancing Intelligence: How the Next Wave of AI Investment is Set to Flow South.”

The report is being launched at FII9, a global conference at which the world’s investment agenda is set, convening the world’s most influential leaders.

After years of concentration in the Global North, investors now predict a significant rebalancing of AI capital flows towards emerging markets, a major shift in investor focus.

The new data show that 87% of global investors plan to increase AI investments in the Global South within the next two years, with India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East identified as most likely beneficiaries.

The study surveyed 250 C-suite leaders from private equity firms (40%), venture capital firms (40%), and corporate venture units of large enterprises (20%) across 13 countries in the Global North. It also included 15 in-depth interviews with senior investors from leading PE, VC, and sovereign wealth funds.

Despite the Global South representing nearly half the world’s population and a quarter of global economic growth, it currently attracts only 28% of AI-related foreign direct investment, a fraction of the $548 billion invested globally over the past two years. There are just nine AI unicorns in the Global South, compared with 305 in the North.

AI dominates this year’s FII9 agenda, with over one third of panels and speakers exploring its potential. From tech and chip CEOs to sovereign funds, global investors and policymakers, FII9 is where the future of AI capital flows is discussed.

“OpenAI’s recent $1 trillion chip investment commitment shows the scale of transformation ahead,” said Richard Attias, CEO of FII Institute. “We must ensure this wave lifts all boats. Bridging the AI investment divide is an economic opportunity and a moral imperative. Innovation must be a driver of shared global prosperity.”

“We are excited to join FII in launching this insightful report, which provides a unique and timely opportunity for global business leaders to learn about the untapped potential of AI to unlock growth in the Global South,” said Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO, Accenture. “AI is much more than a technology—it’s a catalyst for reinvention—and investment in talent, infrastructure and local ecosystems across these regions will help ensure that AI becomes a force for shared prosperity and shape a future where innovation knows no borders.”

The report is the first major deliverable of AI Inclusive, an FII Institute initiative designed to accelerate AI growth in emerging markets by mobilizing investment, supporting startups, and deploying adaptable governance tools.

 

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