February was a rough month for the IT sector. IT stocks fell sharply, dragging down the Nifty IT index and the broader Nifty 50. However, the sector had a small positive development as well. A report by BNP Paribas highlighted that deal signings in the global IT services sector reached their highest level in five months in February.
Cognizant leads deal announcements
Among companies, US-based IT services firm Cognizant led the deal wins with three deals in February and French multinational IT firm Capgemini won two deals.
In terms of Indian IT companies, Coforge and LTIMindtree took the lead with two deals each in February.
Tata Consultancy Services(TCS), HCLTech, Infosys and IBM secured one deal each during the month, according to the report.
IT companies accelerate AI partnerships
The report also highlighted that in the month of February, there was a rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships across global IT services firms as enterprises push for AI-driven transformation.
Cognizant partnered with Google Cloud, Palantir and Uniphore to scale enterprise AI solutions. Capgemini collaborated with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google Cloud to accelerate AI-led enterprise transformation.
Tata Consultancy Services entered partnerships with Honeywell, AMD, GitLab and ServiceNow to develop AI-driven automation and software innovation. Infosys partnered with Anthropic to deploy AI solutions in regulated industries, while HCLTech launched an AI-powered contact centre solution with Cisco and introduced its VisionX 2.0 platform with Nvidia.
Tech Mahindra partnered with SynaXG to develop AI-native network solutions, and Coforge expanded its CodeInsightAI platform with new agentic AI capabilities.
Conclusion
The brokerage noted that the three-month rolling sum of deal signings — which serves as a one-quarter lead indicator for total contract value (TCV) — also increased month-on-month.
Share price of Indian IT stocks
However, the fear of AI disruption tech jobs kept the share price movement muted. Indian IT stocks saw a significant decline in the last 1 month. Coforge declined 26.5%, Infosys declined 13.69%, TCS declined 16.15% and HCLTech declined 13.57%.
