Sources: OpenAI and Anthropic Joint Venture in Talks to Acquire AI Service Companies
Sources reveal that a joint venture formed by OpenAI and Anthropic with private equity firms is in discussions to acquire companies that help businesses deploy artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s new joint venture is in late stages for three deals.
Five of these sources indicated that the AI companies are looking to bring on board hundreds of engineers and consultants to help other businesses put their AI models into practice.
These acquisitions would mark a new front in the competition between the two companies to gain market share in AI. While both companies have previously focused on building more powerful AI models, deploying those models at scale requires a different kind of expertise—which is what they are now hoping to acquire through acquisitions.
Previous reports indicated that OpenAI is raising around $4 billion from 19 investors including TPG, Bain Capital, and Brookfield Asset Management for its joint venture. One of the sources said the joint venture is called “The Deployment Company” and will be formally announced later this week. Anthropic is also reportedly pursuing a similar effort, raising $1.5 billion from investors including Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs.
The majority of the funds raised by these joint ventures are expected to be used to acquire engineering services and consulting firms, the people said. They requested anonymity because the information hasn’t been made public.
Demand for Skilled, Labor-Intensive Services
The move reflects a core paradox in the enterprise AI industry: something often portrayed as a high-margin software business, and thought to potentially eliminate the need for consulting engagements, actually still relies on labor-intensive, highly skilled services.
That’s because businesses need engineers and consultants to customize AI models to their specific data, systems, and workflows, and to adjust the software as business needs change.
Jon Gray, president and chief operating officer of Blackstone, said in a statement that hiring high-skilled talent would “eliminate one of the biggest bottlenecks in enterprise adoption of AI.”
The approach mirrors that of Palantir—embedding engineers within clients’ operations to implement and tweak its software—a playbook that the AI industry is now replicating at scale.
It also suggests that OpenAI and Anthropic may consolidate a fragmented market of small consulting and IT services firms as they build out dedicated application deployment arms.
“We believe that increasing the number of high-skilled implementation partners will help eliminate one of the most significant bottlenecks in enterprise adoption of AI,” Gray said of Anthropic’s joint venture.