CGS Immersive is proud to share that Cicero has earned a Silver Stevie® Award for AI Breakthrough of the Year in The 2026 American Business Awards®. We are grateful for the recognition and for the clients and partners who continue to build with us, challenge us, and trust us with the work of helping people get ready for the moments that matter most.

That recognition reflects more than a single product milestone. It reflects a growing shift in how enterprises think about workforce readiness and human performance, especially in environments where AI, transformation, and daily execution all have to move together.

Cicero combines realistic AI practice, immersive simulations, coaching, analytics, and in-the-flow support so organizations can build and track readiness with far more precision than traditional training allows.

The real constraint is not strategy

Most leadership teams already have strategies for AI, enablement, and transformation. The harder challenge is making those strategies real in conversations with customers, patients, employees, regulators, and frontline teams.

That gap shows up everywhere:

  • Launches lose momentum because teams do not feel ready to change how they sell, support, or lead.

  • Escalations rise because employees have never had the chance to rehearse difficult moments before they happen live.

  • Training finishes on schedule but fails to change what work looks and feels like day to day.

This is the challenge Cicero is built to solve.

 

Practice that looks more like work

Instead of asking people to absorb content and hope it sticks, Cicero gives them a place to practice the moments that define performance. Employees interact with dynamic AI personas that react in real time, change tone, push back, and create the kind of tension and unpredictability people experience on the job.

That makes practice more useful, more honest, and far more transferable. A seller can prepare for a high-stakes clinical or financial conversation. A supervisor can rehearse a difficult feedback discussion. A frontline employee can work through a tense de-escalation scenario before facing one in the real world.

Every interaction also generates data. Leaders can see where people are ready, where confidence drops, and where more reps or different coaching could change outcomes.

Why judges saw a breakthrough

The Stevie judges responded not only to the idea of AI-powered practice, but to the way Cicero ties that practice to measurable business outcomes.

  • A major humanitarian organization rebuilt a key training program around Cicero and achieved a 55 percent reduction in training costs, improved time to proficiency by 30 to 45 percent, and raised 30-day knowledge retention from around 10 percent to more than 85 percent.

  • A global health-tech leader uses Cicero to strengthen sales and surgical education readiness as part of initiatives that contributed to 9 percent revenue growth.

  • Airlines and service organizations report fewer escalations and double-digit gains in performance and confidence after introducing AI-driven scenarios for customer and frontline situations.

Judges described Cicero as “a high-impact, well-evidenced, and clearly differentiated solution” and praised the platform’s measurable gains in cost, proficiency, and retention. They also highlighted its rapid customization, unscripted realism, and ability to support enterprise-scale deployment.

AI that helps people perform more humanly

One of the most meaningful themes in the judges’ comments was that Cicero uses AI to make workforces more human. That idea is central to how we think about the platform.

The goal is not to automate away the moments that require empathy, judgment, composure, and communication. The goal is to give people a better way to prepare for those moments, with a neutral environment where they can try, miss, adjust, and improve before the stakes are real.

That is why the platform feels less like a content library and more like an always-available coach. It helps people build confidence through repetition, improve through feedback, and show up more ready when real conversations begin.

What this signals for enterprise leaders

This award sits alongside broader recognition for how CGS Immersive is using AI, XR, and experiential design to change how work gets done. Together, these signals point to a simple shift: workforce performance is becoming part of the core enterprise stack, right alongside the systems organizations already use to manage customers, operations, and finance.

For leaders, that changes the conversation. The question is not only whether AI exists somewhere in the organization. The question is whether teams are more ready, more consistent, and more effective because of it.

Cicero helps organizations answer that question with something concrete: realistic practice, measurable progress, and stronger performance in the moments that matter most.

If you’re interested in seeing that in your context, we can walk through how those same levers could apply to your teams.