OpenAI and Anthropic partner with private equity
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OpenAI and Anthropic are teaming up with private equity firms on multibillion-dollar ventures to push their AI tools into mid-sized companies.
Why it matters: The two companies want to shore up enterprise adoption of their tools as they race towards IPOs that could come as soon as this fall.
What they're saying: "There's a big gap between what AI can do today and the value the market is truly getting from it," Nicholas Lin, Anthropic's head of product for financial services tells Axios.
- Anthropic has an internal applied AI team that works with companies to ensure they're getting as much as they can out of their tools, but there are limits on how much that can scale.
- The joint venture will help Anthropic scale its support for customers while also developing deployment "templates" that can make it easier to copy and paste strategies for AI deployment across different firms.
Zoom out: OpenAI and Anthropic have both been working to launch joint ventures with some of Wall Street's biggest firms to accelerate adoption of their AI tools, especially among mid-sized companies.
- Anthropic is pursuing a $1.5 billion joint venture with investments from Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs in an effort to sell AI tools to companies, especially those backed by PE firms.
- OpenAI has raised more than $4 billion from investors including TPG, Brookfield, Advent and Bain for a joint venture they're referring to as "The Deployment Company."
Between the lines: AI companies have spent billions building cutting-edge models.
- Now they face a harder challenge: getting companies to use the tools in an ROI positive way.
- Private equity firms offer a built-in distribution channel via their portfolio companies, especially mid-sized firms that lack the in-house expertise to deploy AI on their own.
- Demand is currently strongest for coding tools, but both companies are pushing into sectors like finance and healthcare to expand sales.
What we're watching: The firms and Silicon Valley are betting AI can unlock efficiency gains in the mid-sized companies private equity targets.
