Verified
Colgate-Palmolive
Piloting- Consumer goods
- ~33,600 employees
- AI Hub, built in-house
- OpenAI and Google models
- 51% of salaried staff use AI weekly (2025)
Colgate-Palmolive deploys AI through AI Hub, an internal platform it built in 2023 that gives trained employees OpenAI and Google models. Employees had built 3,000 to 5,000 of their own assistants on AI Hub by Jun 2025. Global head of AI Kli Pappas leads adoption, and Colgate-Palmolive says 51% of its salaried and clerical staff used advanced AI tools weekly at the end of 2025. Colgate-Palmolive also runs proprietary AI for promotions, product concepts and marketing content, but has credited no business return to AI.
colgatepalmolive.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- AI Hub, which Colgate-Palmolive built in early 2023, is a governed internal platform where trained employees use generative AI and build assistants. About 10% of those assistants have been deployed to whole business lines (Dec 2025).
- The models
- Colgate-Palmolive's AI Hub hosts internal versions of OpenAI and Google models plus image generators (Jan 2025), and its assistants are built on OpenAI's Assistants API. Employees at all levels also have Gemini in Google Workspace (Dec 2025).
- The reach
- Colgate-Palmolive says 51% of its salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly at the end of 2025, up from about one-third shortly after ChatGPT launched in late 2022. About 70% of Colgate-Palmolive's vice presidents had finished advanced AI training by Jul 2026.
- The catch
- Colgate-Palmolive has credited no business return to AI. Its one Promo AI figure is $4 million of margin opportunities identified to test (Feb 2026), and Colgate-Palmolive does not split the savings of its productivity programs by cause.
Snapshot
- Employees
- ~33,600
- Dec 31, 2025; over 84% outside the U.S. (2025 Form 10-K)
- Technology budget
- Not disclosed
- Colgate-Palmolive publishes no technology or AI spending figure
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- AI leads in each region, each with about a dozen trained ambassadors (Dec 2025)
- Who owns AI
- Kli Pappas, Global Head of AI
- Head of AI since 2023; Diana Schildhouse, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, sets AI strategy
- Platform
- AI Hub, built in-house
- Launched early 2023; access requires AI training
- Models
- OpenAI and Google
- Internal versions in AI Hub (Jan 2025); Gemini in Google Workspace (Dec 2025)
- Reach
- 51% weekly
- Share of salaried and clerical workers using advanced AI tools weekly, end of 2025
- Use cases
- 3,000 to 5,000 assistants
- Employee-built (Jun 2025), plus Promo AI, an innovation platform and an AI content studio
Key findings
Colgate-Palmolive told The Wall Street Journal in Mar 2026 that 51% of its salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly by the end of 2025, up from about one-third shortly after ChatGPT's release in late 2022. Global head of AI Kli Pappas aims to raise advanced AI use by 10 percentage points each quarter of 2026.
Colgate-Palmolive built AI Hub in early 2023 so employees would not take company data to public AI tools. AI Hub hosts internal versions of OpenAI and Google models and requires AI training before access. Employees had built 3,000 to 5,000 assistants on AI Hub by Jun 2025, about 10% of them deployed to whole business lines (Dec 2025).
Colgate-Palmolive has credited no business return to AI. Its Feb 2026 investor presentation showed $4 million of incremental margin opportunities that Promo AI identified to test at one U.S. retailer. The $200 million to $300 million of annual savings planned from the Strategic Growth and Productivity Program are not tied to AI.
A Colgate-Palmolive plant manager in Greece built an AI assistant that translates equipment manuals and answers questions about them in Greek, so staff could get broken machines running sooner. Colgate-Palmolive has rolled the tool out to 43 manufacturing and production sites (Mar 2026).
CEO Noel Wallace said on Jul 31, 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive had moved from AI pilots into scale, with about 70% of vice presidents through advanced AI training and agents embedded in redesigned manual processes. On Oct 30, 2026, Wallace said Promo AI is in many key markets and that Colgate-Palmolive's proprietary AI innovation platform has made product ideation significantly faster.
Where Colgate sits
- Stage
- Piloting
Colgate-Palmolive has reported no business return that it credits to AI, and its nearest figures fall short. Promo AI identified $4 million of incremental margin opportunities at one U.S. retailer, but they were opportunities to test, not realized margin (Feb 2026). The 16% lift in incremental sales from data clean rooms is credited to clean rooms and includes modeled results, and a Hill's video ad made with Google's Veo was a pilot. On rollout, Colgate-Palmolive told The Wall Street Journal in Mar 2026 that 51% of its salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly by the end of 2025. Global head of AI Kli Pappas owns the adoption program under Chief Data & Analytics Officer Diana Schildhouse, which places Colgate-Palmolive at Piloting. Colgate-Palmolive would move to Scaling with returns credited to AI in several functions, such as realized margin from Promo AI, or with a firm-level AI figure. CEO Noel Wallace said on Jul 31, 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive had moved from AI pilots into scale, but he gave no figure.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- Global head of AI Kli Pappas, under Chief Data & Analytics Officer Diana Schildhouse
- Platform
- Hybrid: AI Hub built in-house; Google Workspace with Gemini and outside models bought
- Models
- OpenAI and Google models, plus image generators, chosen by task
- Hosting
- AI Hub runs internal versions of OpenAI and Google models behind Colgate-Palmolive's firewall, cloud not disclosed; Gemini runs in Google Workspace on Google's cloud
- Reach
- 51% of salaried and clerical staff weekly (end of 2025)
How they deploy
Give everyone a safe tool first
Colgate-Palmolive built AI Hub in early 2023 instead of banning public chatbots. Kli Pappas, who owns Colgate-Palmolive's enterprise risk related to AI, called the choice a risk-based decision because employees denied tools tend to go outside the network (HR Brew, Jun 2025). Pappas said in Jun 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive's first task was to make the whole workforce comfortable with AI. In Dec 2025, Pappas said that companies stuck in incrementalism are letting the frog get boiled.
Domain experts build the assistants
Colgate-Palmolive lets any trained employee build an assistant in AI Hub, and Kli Pappas said the people closest to a problem should build its solution (Dec 2025). One example is an objective-setting assistant, built by a member of the HR team and now used worldwide. A plant manager in Greece built an AI assistant that translates equipment manuals and answers questions about them in Greek, which Colgate-Palmolive rolled out to 43 sites (Mar 2026).
Growth before efficiency
Colgate-Palmolive chose to aim generative AI first at innovation and marketing content, where value can be measured. Kli Pappas said in Jan 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive wanted AI to grow the business, not only drive efficiency. CEO Noel Wallace's 2025 shareholder letter says Colgate-Palmolive is integrating AI across the enterprise to speed the discovery and testing of new products and to generate on-brand content in volume for its omni-channel demand generation model.
Data products, then agents
Noel Wallace said on Jul 31, 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive had invested heavily over the last couple of years so its data can move to agents quickly. Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive has built data products for its analytics teams and is now putting agents on top of them, and that it is redesigning complex manual processes with agents embedded. Kli Pappas said in Dec 2025 that the goal is for agents built by process owners to communicate with each other while humans stay in the loop.
Several models, priced with care
CFO Stan Sutula said in Dec 2025 that some AI models are much better at certain tasks than others, so Colgate-Palmolive offers employees several of them. Sutula added that agent pricing is mostly based on usage, and that one agent Colgate-Palmolive evaluated would have cost more to run than its shared service center. Sutula said Colgate-Palmolive prefers tools for writing its own agents to having a partner build them.
AI in the 2030 strategy
Colgate-Palmolive's 2030 strategy, launched in 2025, names leading in capabilities such as data, analytics and AI as one of its 5 pillars (2025 Form 10-K). The Strategic Growth and Productivity Program, approved in Jul 2025 and expanded in Apr 2026, realigns the organization to support initiatives that include AI. CFO Stan Sutula said on Oct 30, 2026 that part of the program's savings is reinvested in advertising, skills, AI, data and analytics.
- Deployment model
- Colgate-Palmolive runs AI as a central platform with use cases built in the business. Kli Pappas, global head of AI, runs AI Hub, training and AI risk, and also held the title senior director of predictive analytics in Jul 2025. Chief Data & Analytics Officer Diana Schildhouse sets the strategy for enterprise data and analytics, including AI. CIO David Foster leads Global Information Technology, which CFO Stan Sutula has overseen since 2025. Employees build assistants in AI Hub and share them through an automated review. Regional AI leads, each with about a dozen trained ambassadors, run training sessions of 10 to 50 people (Dec 2025). Commercial tools such as Promo AI, the AI innovation platform and the AI Content Studio serve marketing, revenue growth management and innovation teams.
- Model providers
- Colgate-Palmolive's AI Hub hosts internal versions of OpenAI and Google large language models as well as image-generating models, MIT Sloan Management Review reported in Jan 2025, and employees build custom assistants on OpenAI's Assistants API (Retool, Dec 2025). Chief Growth Officer John Hazlin said in Dec 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive is a Google company in its use of Google's suite of tools. Google said the same month that employees at all levels have Google Workspace with Gemini, including Google's text, image and video models, and a Hill's ad pilot used Google's Veo. CFO Stan Sutula said Colgate-Palmolive offers several models because each is better at different tasks (Dec 2025). Colgate-Palmolive has not said which model versions it runs or whether it uses providers beyond OpenAI and Google, such as Anthropic.
- Data and infrastructure
- Colgate-Palmolive keeps its AI Hub models behind the corporate firewall so employees can use prompts that include proprietary knowledge (MIT Sloan Management Review, Jan 2025), but has not said which cloud hosts AI Hub. Gemini runs inside Google Workspace, which Colgate-Palmolive adopted in 2016 with SADA, a Google Cloud partner, as part of a multiyear move from on-premises software to cloud tools (Google, Apr 2021). Colgate-Palmolive's Feb 2026 investor presentation counted 500 harmonized global data sources and 16 data clean rooms across 5 retailers and 11 markets. Its marketing mix models covered 85% of net sales, and a second-generation revenue growth management tool covered 80%. Noel Wallace said in Jul 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive has built data products for its analytics teams and is putting agents on top of them. Generative tools for consumer insight search Colgate-Palmolive's own research archive, Google search trends and syndicated data (Jan 2025).
Platforms and internal tools
AI HubEarly 2023
AI Hub is Colgate-Palmolive's internal generative AI platform, where employees who have completed AI training use internal versions of outside models and build their own assistants by writing instructions and uploading documents. Sharing an assistant beyond its builder requires a written evaluation, answers to 25 questions and confirmation by at least 20 testers, after which deployment to a chosen group is automated (Jul 2025). AI Hub tracks value through built-in surveys that users must complete after a set number of interactions. Colgate-Palmolive is working with Retool to update AI Hub around marketing, innovation and operations and to add a catalogue of agents (Dec 2025).
- Users
- 3,000 to 5,000 assistants built (Jun 2025)
- Models
- OpenAI and Google models, plus image generators
Google Workspace with GeminiBy Dec 2025
Colgate-Palmolive has given employees at all levels Google Workspace with Gemini, where they can use Google's text, image and video models in a company-compliant setting, as part of an enterprise-wide AI upskilling effort (Google, Dec 2025).
- Models
- Google Gemini
AI innovation platformBy Jan 2025
Colgate-Palmolive's proprietary AI innovation platform combines an AI system that surfaces unmet consumer needs with one that drafts product concepts, images and copy. The platform then tests the concepts on digital consumer twins, which give a probability of success score before a product reaches the shelf (2025 shareholder letter; John Hazlin, Dec 2025). Noel Wallace said on Oct 30, 2026 that the platform has made Colgate-Palmolive's new product ideation significantly faster.
Promo AIBy Sep 2024
Promo AI uses large language models, shipment data and retailers' category consumption data to run billions of scenarios and propose a promotional calendar that solves for volume, sales or margin (Mar 2026). Colgate-Palmolive had reached 9 priority retailers through its expansion by Feb 2026, and Noel Wallace said on Oct 30, 2026 that Promo AI is in many key markets.
AI Content StudioBy Feb 2026
Colgate-Palmolive's AI content supply chain, built with its agency partners, creates modular creative and adapts it into thousands of assets for different markets and channels. Hill's Pet Nutrition presented its AI Content Studio, which concepts, creates, assembles and optimizes content, at the CAGNY investor conference in Feb 2026.
Vendors and partners
OpenAI2023
Model provider in AI Hub; Assistants API for employee-built assistants · MIT Sloan Management Review reported in Jan 2025 that AI Hub hosts internal versions of OpenAI models, and Retool reported in Dec 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive's custom assistants use OpenAI's Assistants API.
Google
Model provider in AI Hub; Google Workspace with Gemini for employees; Veo for video · Chief Growth Officer John Hazlin said in Dec 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive uses Google's suite of tools, and Google said that month that employees at all levels have Workspace with Gemini.
RetoolBy Dec 2025
App and agent building platform for the next version of AI Hub · Kli Pappas said at Retool Summit that his team is partnering with Retool to update AI Hub, and that AI ambassadors learn to build agents in Retool.
Boston Consulting Group2025
Partner on the Hill's generative AI video ad pilot · BCG, Google technologists, Hill's marketers and Colgate-Palmolive's Global Digital team ran the pilot (Google, Dec 2025).
Market LogicBy Dec 2024
Generative AI program over Colgate-Palmolive's proprietary consumer research · Diana Schildhouse said at the Reuters NEXT conference in Dec 2024 that employees can query the program about consumer research, such as tooth whitening trends in a market.
ErthosSep 2025
AI materials design platform Zya, for biopolymer packaging · Colgate-Palmolive was the exclusive first partner for Zya, starting with flexible packaging such as sachets and films, before Erthos planned to open it to other companies in early 2026.
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
A central AI team runs a shared platform and training; employees and business functions build the use cases
Colgate-Palmolive has no chief AI officer on its leadership team. Kli Pappas, global head of AI, runs the AI program, and Diana Schildhouse, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, sets the vision and strategy for enterprise data and analytics, including AI. Colgate-Palmolive's leadership page says Chief Growth Officer John Hazlin directs the global growth functions, analytics among them, and that CFO Stan Sutula has overseen Global Information Technology since 2025. Colgate-Palmolive does not publish its reporting lines.
Colgate-Palmolive's AI and predictive analytics team, under global head of AI Kli Pappas, sits inside the data and analytics organization of Chief Data & Analytics Officer Diana Schildhouse. Global Information Technology, under CIO David Foster, includes an enterprise architecture and data platforms group. Digital, marketing and supply chain teams build and use Colgate-Palmolive's commercial AI tools. Colgate-Palmolive has not published how many people work on AI. Colgate-Palmolive has AI leads around the world, each with about a dozen ambassadors trained to teach others, and they had run hundreds of sessions by Dec 2025. Colgate-Palmolive requires AI training for every AI Hub user.
Reporting lines
Chairman, President and CEO
Finance, Global IT and M&A
Stan Sutula, CFO
Global Information Technology
David Foster, CIO
Line inferred from Stan Sutula's responsibility for Global Information Technology since 2025
Growth functions
John Hazlin, Chief Growth Officer
Analytics, design, digital, R&D and supply chain; line not published
Data & Analytics
Diana Schildhouse, Chief Data & Analytics Officer
Line inferred from John Hazlin's responsibility for analytics
AI and predictive analytics
Kli Pappas, Global Head of AI
Line inferred; runs AI Hub, training and AI risk
Marketing
Ram Raghavan, Chief Marketing Officer
Line not published
Colgate-Palmolive's leadership page lists its executives and their responsibilities but no reporting lines. The chart infers from those responsibilities that Global Information Technology sits under the CFO, and that data and analytics, R&D and supply chain sit under the Chief Growth Officer. The chart places the global head of AI under the Chief Data & Analytics Officer because her remit includes AI and his team sits in predictive analytics.
Named people
Use cases
Colgate-Palmolive has not published a count of its AI use cases beyond the 3,000 to 5,000 assistants employees had built on AI Hub by Jun 2025. Colgate-Palmolive's named AI systems cover promotion planning, product concept generation and testing on digital consumer twins, consumer insight search and marketing content. They also include finance and plant knowledge assistants, and fragrance and packaging materials design. Colgate-Palmolive has credited a business return to AI for none of them and reports no firm-level AI return. Its Promo AI figure counts margin opportunities identified to test, not realized margin (Feb 2026), and the savings of its productivity programs are not split by cause.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Promo AI Promo AI runs billions of scenarios on shipment and retailer consumption data with large language models to propose promotional calendars for retail partners that solve for volume, sales or margin (Mar 2026). Colgate-Palmolive showed investors in Feb 2026 that Promo AI had identified $4 million of incremental margin opportunities to test with one U.S. retail partner. Noel Wallace said on Oct 30, 2026 that Promo AI is in many key markets. | Revenue growth management | In production | |
| AI concept generation and digital consumer twins Colgate-Palmolive's proprietary AI innovation platform surfaces unmet consumer needs, drafts concepts, images and copy, and tests them on digital consumer twins that give a probability of success score. Colgate-Palmolive found AI-assisted concepts as good as or better than human-only ones on many measures (Jan 2025) and used the approach for Colgate Optic White Purple (Mar 2026). Noel Wallace said on Oct 30, 2026 that the platform has made new product ideation significantly faster. | Innovation | In production | |
| Generative search over consumer research Colgate-Palmolive employees use generative AI to get instant answers to business questions from the full history of the company's insight reports, trusted third-party sources and Google search trends, with the source documents cited (MIT Sloan Management Review, Jan 2025). Diana Schildhouse said in Dec 2024 that Colgate-Palmolive developed a generative AI program with Market Logic that employees query about its proprietary consumer research, such as tooth whitening trends in a market. | Consumer insights | In production | |
| AI content supply chain Colgate-Palmolive and its agencies use AI to turn modular creative into thousands of assets for different markets and channels. Colgate-Palmolive used the content supply chain to roll out content for Colgate Optic White Purple worldwide after the product's launch in China (Mar 2026). Noel Wallace said on Oct 30, 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive's India business uses a lot of AI-generated content to personalize messages. | Marketing | In production | |
| Hill's generative AI video ads A Hill's Pet Nutrition team with BCG and Google used Google's Veo to make 2 consumer-ready video ads 4 to 6 times faster than usual, in a pilot Google described in Dec 2025. The Hill's ads came at a significantly lower cost per concept and with the same or better lift in purchase consideration. | Marketing | Pilot | |
| Data clean rooms and marketing mix models Colgate-Palmolive runs 16 data clean rooms across 5 retailers and 11 markets, and marketing mix models covering 85% of net sales. Colgate-Palmolive reported a 16% year-on-year increase in incremental sales from clean rooms in 2025 (Feb 2026). The figure includes modeled results, and Colgate-Palmolive credits it to clean rooms, not to AI. Hill's said 70% of its U.S. media spend ran through its clean room in 2025 and that conversion rates for that media doubled. | Marketing | In production | |
| Multilingual equipment manuals assistant A plant manager at Colgate-Palmolive's home care plant in Athens built an AI assistant that translates equipment manuals and answers questions about them in Greek, so staff could get broken machines running sooner. Colgate-Palmolive extended the tool to many languages and 43 manufacturing and production sites (The Wall Street Journal, Mar 2026). | Manufacturing | In production | |
| Finance and accounting policy agent Colgate-Palmolive put its finance and accounting policies and procedures into an agent that answers employees' questions across time zones, and CFO Stan Sutula said in Dec 2025 that it was the second most used agent in the company. | Finance | In production | |
| Employee-built assistants on AI Hub Colgate-Palmolive employees had built 3,000 to 5,000 assistants on AI Hub by Jun 2025, including an objective-setting assistant built by a member of the HR team and now used worldwide. About 10% of the assistants were deployed to whole business lines (Dec 2025). Kli Pappas said in Jul 2025 that, in Colgate-Palmolive's own surveys, about 70% of users reported more creative work and users reported saving about 4 hours a week. | Firmwide | In production | |
| Agents in redesigned processes Noel Wallace said on Jul 31, 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive is redesigning complex manual processes with agents embedded and putting agents on top of its data products. In Oct 2025, Wallace named demand planning and replenishment as an area where AI could automate work and lower working capital. | Operations | Pilot | |
| Palmolive Aroma Essence fragrance design Palmolive Aroma Essence shower gels are the first full Colgate-Palmolive product line to make extensive use of a fragrance house partner's AI. The partner's AI used billions of data points on consumer reactions to predict blends that evoke chosen moods, and consumer panels confirmed the predictions (Jul 2025). | R&D | In production | |
| Zya biopolymer packaging design Colgate-Palmolive has direct access to Erthos's AI materials platform Zya to design non-toxic, PFAS-free biopolymer packaging virtually, starting with sachets and flexible films, toward its goal of cutting virgin plastic use by one-third against 2019 (Sep 2025). | R&D | Pilot |
Adoption
Colgate-Palmolive opened AI Hub to employees in early 2023 behind mandatory training on guardrails, human review and responsible AI. Colgate-Palmolive planned to train every non-plant worker on basic AI by the end of 2024 (Sep 2024), and Google said in Dec 2025 that employees at all levels have Gemini in Google Workspace. Colgate-Palmolive told The Wall Street Journal that 51% of its salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly by the end of 2025, up from about one-third shortly after ChatGPT's release. Kli Pappas aims to add 10 percentage points each quarter of 2026 (Mar 2026). Employees had built 3,000 to 5,000 assistants by Jun 2025, and about 10% of them had reached whole business lines by Dec 2025. Noel Wallace said on Jul 31, 2026 that about 70% of vice presidents had finished advanced AI training. Colgate-Palmolive has not said how many salaried and clerical workers it employs, so the 51% cannot be turned into a headcount from its ~33,600 employees.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
Early 2023
Colgate-Palmolive built AI Hub, a central platform for employees to learn about and use AI, instead of restricting public tools.
2023
Kli Pappas became Colgate-Palmolive's first head of AI.
Aug 2023
Colgate-Palmolive began a closed beta of Profitero's generative AI assistant for digital shelf data and retail content with 17 to 20 employees from the U.S. and global functions.
Sep 2024
Noel Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive uses AI and machine learning to run billions of scenarios for promotion spending. Colgate-Palmolive planned to train every non-plant worker on basic AI principles by the end of 2024.
Dec 2024
Diana Schildhouse said Colgate-Palmolive tests new product ideas on digital consumer twins it built internally and queries its consumer research with a generative AI program built with Market Logic.
Jan 2025
MIT Sloan Management Review reported that AI Hub hosts internal versions of OpenAI and Google models and that all Colgate-Palmolive employees must complete AI training to use it.
End of 2025
51% of Colgate-Palmolive's salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly, as the company told The Wall Street Journal in Mar 2026.
Jun 2025
Kli Pappas said Colgate-Palmolive employees had built 3,000 to 5,000 AI assistants in about 18 months.
Sep 2025
Colgate-Palmolive became the exclusive first partner for Erthos's AI materials platform Zya.
Oct 31, 2025
Noel Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive had launched AI hubs using leading generative AI models and that agentic AI is its next big frontier.
Dec 2025
Google said Colgate-Palmolive employees at all levels have Google Workspace with Gemini, and Kli Pappas said his team was partnering with Retool to update AI Hub.
Jul 31, 2026
Noel Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive had moved from AI pilots into scale, with about 70% of vice presidents through advanced AI training.
Oct 30, 2026
Noel Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive is scaling AI globally, with Promo AI in many key markets.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology and AI spending
Colgate-Palmolive does not disclose a technology budget or what it spends on AI. Noel Wallace said on Oct 31, 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive had spent a significant amount of money over 2 years training and upskilling teams on AI. CFO Stan Sutula said on Oct 30, 2026 that part of the Strategic Growth and Productivity Program's savings is reinvested in advertising, skills, AI, data and analytics. Sutula said in Dec 2025 that agent pricing is mostly based on usage, and that one agent Colgate-Palmolive evaluated would have cost more than its shared service center.
Reported ROI
Colgate-Palmolive has published no firm-level return on AI and no return it credits to AI for any use case. Colgate-Palmolive's Feb 2026 investor presentation showed $4 million of incremental margin opportunities that Promo AI identified to test with one U.S. retail partner. The same presentation showed a 16% year-on-year rise in incremental sales from data clean rooms in 2025, which includes modeled results, and higher media margin return on investment from marketing mix models. Colgate-Palmolive credits none of these figures to AI as a realized return. A Hill's video ad pilot with Google's Veo ran 4 to 6 times faster at a lower cost per concept (Dec 2025). Employees reported saving about 4 hours a week through AI Hub assistants in Colgate-Palmolive's own surveys (Jul 2025), and Kli Pappas told The Wall Street Journal that internal surveys show positive nonmonetary effects (Mar 2026).
Productivity programs
Colgate-Palmolive's funding-the-growth productivity initiatives added 290 basis points to gross margin in the third quarter of 2026, against 300 basis points of higher raw and packaging material costs (Q3 2026 Form 10-Q). The Strategic Growth and Productivity Program, approved on Jul 31, 2025 and expanded on Apr 30, 2026, is expected to cost $350 million to $550 million before tax, 70% to 80% of it severance and other employee costs. Colgate-Palmolive expects the program to save $200 million to $300 million a year, mostly in 2027 and 2028. Colgate-Palmolive describes the program as optimizing its supply chain and aligning its organization to support initiatives including AI, and does not say how much of any saving comes from AI.
Headcount
Colgate-Palmolive had about 33,600 employees on Dec 31, 2025, in more than 100 countries, with over 84% outside the United States (2025 Form 10-K); Retool described Colgate-Palmolive as having 34,000 employees when its AI program began in 2023. Colgate-Palmolive had incurred $300 million of employee-related charges under the Strategic Growth and Productivity Program by Sep 30, 2026, and has not tied any role reductions to AI.
Governance and risk
Training gate
Colgate-Palmolive requires every employee to complete AI training before using AI Hub, covering guardrails, keeping a human in the loop, its responsible AI principles, use case selection and prompting (Jan 2025). Noel Wallace's 2025 shareholder letter says Colgate-Palmolive will rebuild legacy processes with AI tools with humans in the loop.
Reviewing what employees build
A Colgate-Palmolive employee can use an assistant they build straight away, but sharing it needs a written evaluation, answers to 25 questions and confirmation from at least 20 testers. Users must complete an impact survey after a set number of interactions to keep using an assistant (Jun and Jul 2025). Kli Pappas said in Dec 2025 that Colgate-Palmolive trains builders to tell low-risk uses from high-risk ones, such as screening resumes, because regulation applies to the use, not the technology.
Data boundary
Colgate-Palmolive keeps AI Hub's models behind the corporate firewall so employees can use proprietary knowledge in prompts (Jan 2025). Colgate-Palmolive's AI policy commits to data privacy and confidentiality, bias checks, transparency within the bounds of security and law, and security best practices. The policy requires third parties to provide AI literacy training and accountability, and bars AI uses that threaten people's fundamental rights, such as exploiting vulnerabilities or manipulating behavior.
Ownership of AI risk
Kli Pappas said in Jun 2025 that he owns Colgate-Palmolive's enterprise risk related to AI. Colgate-Palmolive's 2026 proxy statement says oversight of AI sits with the full board, which regularly discusses the company's AI governance, strategy and risk management.
Disclosed risks
Colgate-Palmolive's 2025 Form 10-K warns that generative AI outputs can be false, biased or out of line with its values, and that generative AI tools may expose confidential information or intellectual property. The 10-K also says that AI-aided retailer pricing and AI-assisted shopping are changing competition, and that Colgate-Palmolive is subject to AI laws and regulations.
Recent signals
Oct 30, 2026
Noel Wallace said on the third-quarter call that Colgate-Palmolive is scaling AI globally, with Promo AI in many key markets and a proprietary AI innovation platform that has made new product ideation significantly faster. Wallace also said the India business uses AI-generated content to personalize messages.
Aug 4, 2026
Consumer Goods Technology reported that Colgate-Palmolive's entire senior team took part in a vibe coding experiment just before its second-quarter results.
Jul 31, 2026
Noel Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive had moved from AI pilots into scale, that about 70% of vice presidents had finished advanced AI training, and that agents are being embedded in redesigned manual processes.
May 1, 2026
Colgate-Palmolive expanded its Strategic Growth and Productivity Program, targeting $200 million to $300 million of annualized savings, mostly in 2027 and 2028, and Noel Wallace cited Promo AI among the efforts that support profit growth.
Mar 25, 2026
Colgate-Palmolive's proxy statement said oversight of AI sits with the full board, which regularly discusses AI governance, strategy and risk.
Mar 13, 2026
Colgate-Palmolive executives described at CAGNY and a UBS conference how AI tests product ideas, produces thousands of content assets and runs Promo AI scenarios for retailers.
Mar 2026
The Wall Street Journal profiled global head of AI Kli Pappas and reported that 51% of Colgate-Palmolive's salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly by the end of 2025. The Journal also reported that a plant manager's manuals assistant runs at 43 sites.
Feb 20, 2026
Colgate-Palmolive told the CAGNY investor conference that AI now runs through every step of its innovation process. Its presentation showed Promo AI reaching 9 priority retailers, 16 data clean rooms and an AI Content Studio at Hill's.
Feb 2026
Colgate-Palmolive's 2025 Form 10-K reported about 33,600 employees and named leading in data, analytics and AI as a pillar of its 2030 strategy, alongside AI risk disclosures.
Jan 30, 2026
Noel Wallace said Colgate-Palmolive is accelerating investment in digital, data, analytics and AI, including revenue growth management and AI-driven innovation, and using predictive analytics and automation in its supply chain.
Dec 4, 2025
John Hazlin and Stan Sutula told the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Conference that Colgate-Palmolive uses Google's tools and offers several models. Sutula said a finance policy agent is Colgate-Palmolive's second most used agent.
Dec 4, 2025
Kli Pappas said at Retool Summit that Colgate-Palmolive is updating AI Hub with Retool and plans a catalogue of agents that communicate with each other.
Dec 1, 2025
Google described a Hill's Pet Nutrition pilot that made 2 video ads with Veo 4 to 6 times faster than usual, and said Colgate-Palmolive employees at all levels have Gemini in Google Workspace.
Quick answers
- How does Colgate-Palmolive deploy AI?
- Colgate-Palmolive deploys AI through AI Hub, an internal platform it built in 2023 that gives trained employees OpenAI and Google models. Employees had built 3,000 to 5,000 of their own assistants on AI Hub by Jun 2025. Global head of AI Kli Pappas leads adoption, and Colgate-Palmolive says 51% of its salaried and clerical staff used advanced AI tools weekly at the end of 2025. Colgate-Palmolive also runs proprietary AI for promotions, product concepts and marketing content, but has credited no business return to AI.
- What does Colgate-Palmolive use AI for?
- Colgate-Palmolive has not published a count of its AI use cases beyond the 3,000 to 5,000 assistants employees had built on AI Hub by Jun 2025. Colgate-Palmolive's named AI systems cover promotion planning, product concept generation and testing on digital consumer twins, consumer insight search and marketing content. They also include finance and plant knowledge assistants, and fragrance and packaging materials design. Colgate-Palmolive has credited a business return to AI for none of them and reports no firm-level AI return. Its Promo AI figure counts margin opportunities identified to test, not realized margin (Feb 2026), and the savings of its productivity programs are not split by cause.
- Who leads AI at Colgate-Palmolive?
- AI at Colgate-Palmolive is led by Diana Schildhouse (Chief Data & Analytics Officer); Kli Pappas (Global Head of AI); David Foster (Chief Information Officer). Ownership of AI on the org chart: Global head of AI Kli Pappas, under Chief Data & Analytics Officer Diana Schildhouse.
- What AI platform does Colgate-Palmolive use?
- AI Hub, which Colgate-Palmolive built in early 2023, is a governed internal platform where trained employees use generative AI and build assistants. About 10% of those assistants have been deployed to whole business lines (Dec 2025).
- Which AI models does Colgate-Palmolive use?
- Colgate-Palmolive's AI Hub hosts internal versions of OpenAI and Google models plus image generators (Jan 2025), and its assistants are built on OpenAI's Assistants API. Employees at all levels also have Gemini in Google Workspace (Dec 2025).
- How many Colgate employees use AI?
- Colgate-Palmolive says 51% of its salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly at the end of 2025, up from about one-third shortly after ChatGPT launched in late 2022. About 70% of Colgate-Palmolive's vice presidents had finished advanced AI training by Jul 2026.
- What return has Colgate-Palmolive reported from AI?
- Colgate-Palmolive has reported no business return that it credits to AI, and its nearest figures fall short. Promo AI identified $4 million of incremental margin opportunities at one U.S. retailer, but they were opportunities to test, not realized margin (Feb 2026). The 16% lift in incremental sales from data clean rooms is credited to clean rooms and includes modeled results, and a Hill's video ad made with Google's Veo was a pilot. On rollout, Colgate-Palmolive told The Wall Street Journal in Mar 2026 that 51% of its salaried and clerical workers used advanced AI tools weekly by the end of 2025. Global head of AI Kli Pappas owns the adoption program under Chief Data & Analytics Officer Diana Schildhouse, which places Colgate-Palmolive at Piloting. Colgate-Palmolive would move to Scaling with returns credited to AI in several functions, such as realized margin from Promo AI, or with a firm-level AI figure. CEO Noel Wallace said on Jul 31, 2026 that Colgate-Palmolive had moved from AI pilots into scale, but he gave no figure.
Open questions
- Which cloud hosts AI Hub's OpenAI and Google models, and does Colgate-Palmolive run any models in its own data centers?
- Which model providers besides OpenAI and Google does Colgate-Palmolive offer employees, and which versions?
- What does Colgate-Palmolive spend on AI, including model and token costs, and on technology overall?
- How much realized margin has Promo AI delivered, beyond the $4 million of opportunities it identified to test at one U.S. retailer in Feb 2026?
- What business return have the AI innovation platform, the AI content supply chain, the manuals assistant and the finance policy agent delivered?
- How many salaried and clerical workers does Colgate-Palmolive employ, and did advanced AI use rise by 10 percentage points a quarter in 2026 as Kli Pappas aimed?
- Who do Kli Pappas, Diana Schildhouse and David Foster report to, and does any corporate officer own AI?
- Does Brigitte King still lead digital at Colgate-Palmolive, and who now runs the global digital organization?
- How many of the roles affected by the Strategic Growth and Productivity Program relate to AI or automation?
- How many people work on AI and data science at Colgate-Palmolive?
Sources
Colgate-Palmolive
Filings and investor materials
- 2025 Form 10-K
- 2025 Annual Report, letter from Noel Wallace
- 2026 proxy statement (Mar 25, 2026)
- Form 10-Q for the quarter ended Sep 30, 2026
- CAGNY 2026 presentation (Feb 20, 2026)
- Q3 2026 earnings call transcript (Oct 30, 2026), Bullfincher
- Q2 2026 earnings call transcript (Jul 31, 2026), Bullfincher
- Q1 2026 earnings call transcript (May 1, 2026), Bullfincher
- Q4 2025 earnings call transcript (Jan 30, 2026), Bullfincher
- Q3 2025 earnings call transcript (Oct 31, 2025), Bullfincher
- Q2 2025 earnings call transcript (Aug 1, 2025), Bullfincher
Partners
News
- The National Herald: WSJ spotlights Iraklis Pappas, AI evangelist at Colgate-Palmolive (Mar 5, 2026)
- José A. Alvarado Jr.: The Wall Street Journal, The AI evangelist shaking up a 220-year-old toothpaste maker (Mar 2026)
- Consumer Goods Technology: Colgate-Palmolive readies organization for agentic future (Aug 4, 2026)
- Consumer Goods Technology: Scaling at speed, how Colgate-Palmolive uses AI (Mar 13, 2026)
- diginomica: How agentic AI will help Colgate-Palmolive (Dec 4, 2025)
- PYMNTS: Inside Colgate's enterprise-wide AI push (Dec 19, 2025)
- CIO Dive: Colgate-Palmolive plans agentic AI push (Nov 3, 2025)
- Packaging Dive: Colgate-Palmolive signs on to AI tool for biomaterials development (Sep 8, 2025)
- Consumer Goods Technology: How to build an AI agent strategy, lessons from Colgate and Mondelez (Jul 31, 2025)
- HR Brew: This Fortune 500 enables its employees to create AI solutions (Jun 18, 2025)
- MIT Sloan Management Review: The GenAI focus shifts to innovation at Colgate-Palmolive (Jan 30, 2025)
- The Financial Express: Colgate testing new product ideas on digital twins (Dec 2024)
- CIO Dive: Colgate-Palmolive deploys AI to drive top-line growth, productivity (Sep 9, 2024)
- Consumer Goods Technology: Colgate-Palmolive piloting generative AI chatbot (Aug 11, 2023)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
Colgate-Palmolive profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 9, 2026
