Cicero, CGS Immersive’s unified workforce performance AI platform, has earned a Silver Stevie® Award for AI Breakthrough of the Year in The 2026 American Business Awards® for helping enterprises turn critical human skills into something they can practice, measure, and manage at scale.

The AI Breakthrough of the Year category sits within a set of AI awards that recognize organizations using artificial intelligence to drive meaningful business outcomes, not just experimentation.

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, even more, for the clients and partners who continue to push this work forward with us by rethinking how people get ready for critical work moments.

Cicero brings together AI-powered practice, immersive simulations, real-time coaching, hire-to-retire interviews, analytics, and in-the-flow performance support. Together, these capabilities help organizations improve how people prepare for, perform in, and learn from high-stakes moments across hiring, onboarding, frontline execution, customer experience, and leadership.

The American Business Awards recognized Cicero because it does more than deliver training content. It gives enterprises a way to build readiness through realistic practice and connect that readiness to metrics leaders already track, including ramp time, service quality, knowledge retention, safety, and revenue contribution.

The enterprise multiplier

Across industries, leaders are investing heavily in AI, transformation, and new operating models. The differentiator is whether teams can carry strategy into real conversations, decisions, and pressure-filled moments with confidence and consistency.

That is where Cicero creates leverage. Instead of treating workforce readiness as a separate initiative, organizations can use the platform to make practice part of how the business operates, giving teams more high-quality reps and giving leaders clearer insight into where readiness is strong and where risk is building.

Traditional training often struggles to do that at scale because it takes time to build, tends to flatten real-world complexity, and rarely maps cleanly to the business outcomes discussed in QBRs and board reviews. Cicero changes that equation by helping organizations treat human capability as a measurable, operational asset.

What the platform enables

With Cicero, employees engage with lifelike AI personas that react in real time across hundreds of languages and dialects, while coaching, feedback, and analytics capture how they respond and improve. Teams can practice difficult customer conversations, leadership moments, field scenarios, coaching interactions, and other situations where skill, judgment, and emotional control are essential.

Judges repeatedly pointed to the solution’s rapid customization, unscripted realism, and enterprise scale as key differentiators. One called it “a high-impact, well-evidenced, and clearly differentiated solution that feels like a true category leader.”

Results that move business outcomes

This recognition reflects measurable results across real programs.

  • A major humanitarian organization used Cicero in a redesigned training program and reduced training costs by 55 percent, improved time to proficiency by 30 to 45 percent, and increased 30-day knowledge retention from around 10 percent to more than 85 percent.

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

  • Airlines and service organizations have reported fewer customer escalations and double-digit gains in frontline performance and confidence after introducing AI-driven simulations for high-pressure scenarios.

Judges noted that the platform delivers measurable improvements in training cost, speed to proficiency, and knowledge retention, demonstrating both real‑world impact and scalability. Several also highlighted how quickly it has scaled year over year as Cicero matures as a production‑grade enterprise platform, after first earning a Silver Stevie® in 2025 in the Corporate Learning & Workforce Development category.

AI that strengthens human performance

A clear theme in the judges’ feedback was that Cicero uses AI to strengthen human capability, not bypass it. The platform gives people a safe, neutral environment where they can practice difficult, unpredictable, and emotionally charged interactions until they are ready to handle them in the real world.

Judges described Cicero as “a critical neutral platform to practice navigating difficult, unpredictable, emotional moments” and “a compelling innovation addressing real workforce skill gaps through practical AI-driven simulation.” That perspective gets to the heart of the work: AI becomes a coach, a mirror, and a force multiplier for the human skills enterprises need most.[

Recognition that reflects a broader shift

This Silver Stevie Award builds on other recent recognition for CGS Immersive’s approach to AI, XR, and experiential design, including Fast Company’s ranking of the company among the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Together, these signals reflect a broader shift in the market as workforce performance systems become a core part of how enterprises execute strategy, improve resilience, and support people through change.

For leaders, the takeaway is practical. When stakeholders ask whether AI investments are improving execution, customer experience, revenue, and risk, Cicero gives you a concrete answer rooted in readiness and performance, not just activity.

Let’s map the one or two moments in your business where performance matters most and see what this could look like for your teams.