Hyderabad-based Darwinbox on Monday said it ranks among the top two human capital management vendors globally for Applied AI in the 2026 Gartner Critical Capabilities report.

The report covers HCM suites for enterprises with more than 1,000 employees. Darwinbox was one of only two vendors to score 3.4 or higher for Applied AI.

The recognition follows the launch of Darwinbox Cortex, an AI-native HCM platform rebuilt from the ground up rather than layered with AI on top. It launched with design partners including Fortune 1000 company Visteon and Transcarent, and technology partners Microsoft, Slack and Glean.

Gartner highlighted the company’s overall AI strategy, pointing to more than 60 pre-built agentic and generative AI use cases, Model Context Protocol and Agent2Agent interoperability, and a no-code Agent Builder.

Co-founder and co-CEO Chaitanya Peddi said the next phase of AI in HR would be decided by how deeply AI understands an organisation’s people, roles, skills, policies and workflows.