The company has rolled out its own generative AI platforms, pumped cash into hybrid computing infrastructure and built fancy liquid cooling tech to slash power use in data centres. Investors love the AI story, but a long-festering scandal from the UK threatens to smash the momentum.
The mess centres on the UK Post Office’s Horizon IT system, designed and maintained by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting because of dodgy data spewed out by the software. Lives were ruined, with some people jailed and others left bankrupt.
A public inquiry last week confirmed Fujitsu knew about “bugs, errors and defects” in Horizon, sparking fresh legal and political heat.
Fujitsu developer Gerald Barnes told the Horizon inquiry in 2024: “Error handling wasn’t as good as it could have been if designed properly from the start."
Anger in Parliament is boiling over, with former MP Kevan Jones demanding Fujitsu cough up an interim compensation payment of £300 million (€354 million).
That sum would gobble roughly a fifth of Fujitsu’s adjusted operating profit for the year ending March. Add in the looming legal fees, compliance headaches and possible revenue hits from suspended contracts, and the final bill could be far nastier.
Fujitsu’s UK revenue relies heavily on public-sector work. It has been one of Whitehall’s go-to suppliers for decades, with Treasury-linked bodies alone signing more than £3.4 billion (€4 billion) in deals since 2019. If political pressure forces a ban or even a partial freeze on future contracts, the damage would be severe. Losing just its deal with HM Revenue & Customs would wipe out another £300 million (€354 million) in annual revenue.
Globally, Fujitsu has been riding high on AI. Its mix of cloud computing and supply chain management has powered earnings growth over the past year, with investors banking on demand only accelerating. But if the UK fallout guts its earnings and shreds international trust, those same investors could find themselves holding the wrong end of the stick.