How Genesys Uses AI to Achieve Carbon Neutrality

Software companies are grappling with a growing problem: their environmental footprint keeps expanding even as they try to cut emissions. 

These firms range from energy-hungry data centres and cloud computing to employee travel and complex supply chains.

It’s particularly tricky for companies building AI-powered products. 

Training machine learning (ML) models requires massive amounts of computing power and running those systems at scale doesn't get much easier on electricity bills.

Genesys, which makes customer service software for call centres and online chat systems, thinks it's found a way around this dilemma. 

The company has managed to reduce its carbon footprint whilst rolling out more AI features than ever before.

Under Bridgette Bell McAdoo, Genesys’s Chief Sustainability Officer, the company has made its cloud operations carbon neutral and cut overall emissions by 13% in the past year. 

That’s happened alongside launching 150 new AI features and handling millions more customer conversations.

The approach goes beyond just buying carbon offsets or switching to renewable energy contracts.

Instead, Genesys has focused on making its AI systems more efficient and rethinking how it designs and deploys new technology from the ground up.

What are Genesys' sustainability goals?

At Genesys, we’ve set bold sustainability goals that reflect our commitment to people, the planet and sustainable performance. 

We are working toward becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2040 to meet our planet goals. And we’re already making real progress.

For example, Genesys Cloud operations are carbon neutral as of 2024 and have remained that way even as usage continues to grow, which we’re really proud of. 

We’ve also submitted our emissions targets to the Science Based Targets initiative, so everything we’re doing is aligned with global standards. 

But sustainability isn’t just about climate for us. 

It’s about people too, both our employees and the communities where we work and serve. 

One of our big goals is to power 80 million conversations  between nonprofits and people in need by 2030. That’s through our Charitable Discount Program and we’ve already helped enable 16 million conversations in just the first two years of the programme. 

And then there’s our sustainable performance.

Strong governance and ethical responsible innovation are the backbone of all our efforts. 

We’ve put a lot of work into AI ethics, risk management and leading with transparency across the board. 

So, when we talk about sustainability, it’s really about creating long-term value, not just for our company, but for the communities we serve and the planet we all share.

How is Genesys helping customers advance their carbon reduction goals? 

One of the key ways we support our customers' carbon reduction efforts is by making our own  operations and products more sustainable. 

For example, Genesys Cloud has been carbon neutral since 2024, so when customers use our platform, they're not adding to their own carbon footprint from those services. 

We also put a lot of emphasis on energy efficiency. 

Whether it’s optimising how our cloud infrastructure runs, or designing AI models that use fewer resources, we’re focused on delivering great customer experiences with a lighter environmental impact. 

Beyond that, we’re building features that help customers reduce their own emissions, too. 

When they choose Genesys, they’re not just getting powerful tools; they’re getting a partner who’s actively working  to reduce emissions across the entire value chain.

How is Genesys using technology and AI? 

Technology and AI are at the heart of what we do at Genesys. They power the way we help businesses deliver exceptional customer experiences. 

In our previous fiscal year alone, we launched more than 150 new AI features, all built to make customer and employee interactions more efficient and empathetic. 

But we’re not just focused on what AI can do, we’re focused on how to do it responsibly. That means designing models that are energy-efficient, right-sized for the task and built with ethics in mind. 

We’ve also strengthened our AI Ethics Guidelines, created easy-to-understand AI product fact sheets and launched an AI Ethics Roundtable to guide how we build. 

For us, innovation isn’t just about scale. It’s about doing it in a way that’s transparent, sustainable and grounded in trust.

How did Genesys achieve a 13% reduction in GHG emissions? 

What’s exciting is that it was an organic reduction. That means we didn’t just rely on carbon offsets. 

We actually cut emissions by using energy more efficiently and making smarter, greener choices across the business. 

We made key investments in sustainable buildings, like our LEED Platinum-certified R&D center in Budapest and LEED Gold-certified offices in Manila and Riyadh. 

These are in addition to our other LEED certified offices in Menlo Park, California and Galway, Ireland. 

These spaces were designed with energy efficiency in mind. 

On the technical side, one way we reduced emissions was by making our AI capabilities more energy efficient as we scaled. 

We used things like model compression, right-sized architectures and foundation models to cut down the energy required for training and running them.

That lets us roll out more AI, while minimising the environmental impact.  

We're also ramping up renewable energy use, fine-tuning how we track emissions and involving our employees in conservation efforts. 

All of this came together to drive a 13% emissions reduction during  the period, a meaningful step toward our long-term climate goals.