It was founded in Chennai, India, as an in-house technology unit of Dun & Bradstreet in 1994,[7] and started serving external clients in 1996.

[13] In 1996, Dun & Bradstreet spun off several of its subsidiaries, including Erisco, IMS International, Nielsen Media Research, Pilot Software, Strategic Technologies and DBSS, to form a new company called Cognizant Corporation, headquartered in Chennai, India.

In June 1998, IMS Health partially spun off the company, conducting an initial public offering of the Cognizant stock.

In 2003, IMS Health sold its entire 56% stake in Cognizant, which instituted a poison pill provision to prevent hostile takeover attempts.

[27] On 22 April 2024, Cognizant announced its partnership with Microsoft Corporation to extend its reach of Generative AI and Copilots, also to enhance experiences of employee and speed up their cross-industry innovation.

The other centers of the company are in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mangalore, Mumbai, Noida, Pune and Indore.

The company has local, regional, and global delivery centers in the UK, Australia, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain, China, Philippines, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico etc.

Jatin Dalal (CFO)[118] a, Surya Gummadi[119] and Rajesh Nambiar (President, Digital Business & Technology)[120] are some of the others in the leadership team.

Cognizant has a grassroots corporate social responsibility project called Outreach, through which the volunteer employees lend their expertise for devising skill-building and workforce programs to improve the operations of NGOs.

[148] Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T) paid million in bribes to Indian government officials on behalf of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. to secure permits, ranging from environmental clearance to power.

[151] In a 2024 retrial, a jury found the company had discriminated and should pay damages[152] 200 senior executives, above the Director's Level were dismissed because they were not able to catch up with the latest technologies.

The labor department closed the case in favor of employees and advised company management to give one more opportunity for the petitioners to prove themselves.

At the time Cognizant had also rolled out a ‘voluntary separation program’ for directors, associate vice-presidents and senior VP's which compensated them with 6–9 months of their salary.

[158] In 2016, Cognizant announced that it was cooperating with US authorities in an investigation related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and carrying out its own probe to determine whether some payments made in India breached the law.

[159] Cognizant has been sued by Crawford & Company, the US-based independent providers of insurance claims-handling services, for alleged breach of contract.

In January 2011, the company announced plans to expand its U.S. delivery centers, including a new 1,000-person (0.4% of worldwide workforce) facility in Phoenix, Arizona.

Joseph Petrecca, the director of the Wage and Hour Division's Northern New Jersey District Office noted that the company took immediate steps to correct the violations, saying the "level of cooperation sets a standard for others in the industry.

[166] Cognizant employees tasked with content moderation for Facebook developed mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of exposure to graphic violence, hate speech, and conspiracy theories in the videos they were instructed to evaluate.

[169][171] Content moderator Keith Utley suffered a heart attack while working for Cognizant in March 2018 and died in a hospital; the Tampa office lacked an on-site defibrillator.

[169][173] In the Tampa office, workers reported bed bugs, unsanitary work conditions, inadequate mental health resources, sexual harassment, workplace violence, and theft.