Shareholders quiz Infosys on AI hit as stock nears six-year low

at least half At Infosys Ltd’s 45th annual general meeting (AGM) on Tuesday, 22 shareholders present virtually questioned the management about the company’s falling share prices and threats posed by automation tools.

Shares of India’s second-largest information technology service provider fell 3.4% on Tuesday, near a six-year low, despite management sharing opportunities presented by technology.

“Do you know why the share price is falling? Because we are not investing in the future and hence foreign investors are offloading our shares,” said Om Prakash Kejriwal, a shareholder from Kolkata, during the Q&A session with the management.

Management declined to comment on share prices but said the company is poised to capitalize on AI-led opportunities.

“The opportunities are huge because of the many new things that are possible with AI (artificial intelligence),” said Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and president. “So we see a lot of jobs coming in the coming years.”

Still, shareholders punished the company as its shares fell to multi-year lows on fears that artificial intelligence could weaken the appeal of IT services firms.

Concerns about the impact of advancements in artificial intelligence tools have caused shares of IT services companies to deteriorate since the beginning of the year. Infosys shares are down more than 35% in the last 12 months.

Shareholders also asked management questions about the impact of AI on jobs, growth and the broader technology services sector.

To boost shareholder sentiment amid the AI-driven sell-off, the company had announced a buyback value. ₹18,000 crore last year, at least one shareholder has expressed disappointment over this.

“You humans destroyed ₹18,000 crore in buyback,” the shareholder said, adding that buybacks have not boosted investor sentiment.

The management did not accept the shareholders’ question regarding the reappointment of Salil Parekh as chief executive officer.

Salil Parekh took over as managing director on January 2, 2018 for a period of five years. He was reappointed for another five years in May 2022, a year before his term ends. His current term will continue until March 2027.

The Bengaluru-based company finished fiscal 2026 with revenue of $20.16 billion, up 4.6% compared to fiscal 2025. One-third of its increased revenue came from manufacturing firms.

However, the management said demand remained weak. “The overall demand environment remains soft and we see customers remaining cautious due to macro concerns; growth has also been impacted by AI inflation,” treasurer Jayesh Sanghrajka said at the AGM.

According to the company’s guidance, published in April and reviewed by shareholders at the AGM, management expects revenue growth of approximately 1.5-3.5% in the financial year.

Sanghrajka defended the company’s call to share its revenue guidance. “Our guidance reduces information asymmetry between management and stakeholders in our minds. This is global best practice that the company has adopted over the years to provide a baseline for market expectation and provide shareholders with a view on current plans and likely performance, for the benefit of shareholders,” he added.

The CFO’s comments come a month after Nilekani told shareholders that “Infosys is more useful than ever.”

The company also said it will not cut back on new hires and will hire close to 20,000 people in the fiscal, the same as in FY26, even as humans work with AI agents.

“AI adoption is still at a very early stage across many of our customers and industries, and so we will see the development of a lot of expertise, both human and agent-based, associated with a deep understanding of the domain, and that is where we will see the benefit of the experience we have,” Parekh said.

Parekh’s comments come after Tata Consultancy Services Ltd chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran’s recent statement that the country’s largest technology services firm may eventually deploy as many AI agents as employees. “The company will have an equal number of AI employees, we call them AI agents, because there are employees. (If) the company has half a million employees, the day is not far off when the company will have half a million AI agents,” Chandrasekaran said on June 9.

Unlike Infosys, TCS said it expects hiring to remain muted. “Will this (AI) definitely lead to a reduction in hiring? Absolutely. The company will not hire the kind of people it used to hire,” said Chandrasekaran, “because in the current setup, certain parts of the work will go to agencies.”

TCS had closed FY26 with 584,519 employees, a decrease of 23,460 from the previous year. Much of this reduction was due to the company’s largest layoff campaign last year.