In Brief
Anthropic and OpenAI announced nearly identical enterprise joint ventures within hours of each other, each anchored by major private-equity firms and built on the Palantir forward-deployed engineer model.
The structure is purpose-built to compress the cost of knowledge work inside thousands of private-equity portfolio companies.
What Happened
Anthropic and OpenAI just gave private equity a direct on-ramp into deploying AI inside thousands of portfolio companies. Both labs announced nearly identical joint ventures on Monday aimed at selling enterprise AI services to portfolio companies of major private-equity firms. They made the announcements within hours of each other.
Anthropic's vehicle is a $1.5 billion joint venture anchored by Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman, each putting in roughly $300 million. Goldman Sachs is in for around $150 million, with General Atlantic, Apollo Global Management, Leonard Green, GIC, and Sequoia Capital participating as well. The new entity will act as a consulting arm that helps mid-sized companies, especially private equity-backed ones, incorporate AI across their operations.
Hours earlier, Bloomberg reported OpenAI is raising for a similar venture called The Deployment Company. OpenAI's vehicle is bigger: $4 billion raised from 19 investors at a $10 billion valuation, with named participants including TPG, Brookfield Asset Management, Advent, and Bain Capital. There is no apparent investor overlap between the two ventures.
The structure of both deals is the same: The joint ventures raise capital from alternative asset managers, then channel that capital into building enterprise AI deployments inside those investors' portfolio companies, with the investors capturing more value from any resulting contracts.
Both ventures are expected to lean on the forward-deployed engineer model popularized by Palantir, with engineers sitting inside customer organizations to build into existing workflows.
SmarterX founder and CEO Paul Roetzer broke down what these structures actually do on Episode 214 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
The Key Numbers
$1.5 billion - A joint venture anchored by Anthropic-Blackstone-Hellman & Friedman, each putting in roughly $300 million
$4 billion - What OpenAI's "Deployment Company" raised across 19 investors at a $10 billion valuation
$6 trillion - approximate U.S. annual spend on knowledge worker labor, which AI companies are targeting
6x - historical ratio of services revenue to software revenue, the pattern Roetzer expects to repeat here
Going After the $6 Billion Knowledge Workforce
The HubSpot pattern in a new domain. Roetzer ran one of HubSpot's first agency partners and saw the services-to-software ratio play out firsthand. "HubSpot always touted this research, at least in the later years where I had my agency, that for every dollar of software, there was $6 of services," he says. "Directionally that is where they're looking." That in order for their technology to be used fully, for them to get the full value, they need to go in and do the work and not rely on outside people, he says.
The PE math is explicit. Roetzer is direct about what these ventures are designed to compress. "You're not doing deals with PE firms to just go in and optimize firms and hire tons of people," he says. "This is explicitly to go after the $6 trillion in human labor of knowledge workers. If you're a PE firm and you have 200 companies within your portfolio, you bring them in and there's this compounding value. You're also looking at the replacement of people."
Revenue per employee is the metric. The unit economics PE firms are now pursuing have shifted. "PE firms are there to maximize returns, reduce costs, increase revenue, but do it where you want the revenue per employee number to skyrocket," says Roetzer. "Let's say you have a portfolio and the average revenue per employee number is $400,000. What if it was $4 million instead? You're going to go in with these super aggressive goals to change the financial dynamics of all this stuff."
Not AI washing. When Mike Kaput pointed back to the Coinbase debate over whether AI was the real cause of layoffs, Roetzer was unequivocal. "This is the real deal," he says.
"It is going to be a very disruptive model. They're going to generate a ton of money doing this."
Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of SmarterX, Episode 214 of The Artificial Intelligence Show
SmarterX Take
The two joint ventures are the clearest signal yet that AI deployment is moving from a software sale to a services-led restructuring of how companies are staffed. The labs are not just selling tokens anymore. They are walking into mid-sized companies with capital from the people who own those companies, and the explicit goal is to remake the org chart. For business leaders in any PE-backed company, the practical question is whether the AI plan inside your company is being driven by your team or being imported through the new joint venture in the next 18 months.
The under-discussed angle is what happens to the traditional consulting incumbents. McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are already reselling AI models and running their own AI transformation practices. They now have to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI. The unanswered question: How do they do this?
What to Watch
The first big portfolio rollouts. Both joint ventures will need a marquee proof point inside one of the anchor investors' portfolio companies. Watch which sector goes first. The earliest deployments are likely to be in financial services, business process operations, and PE-backed mid-market software companies, where revenue per employee gains are easiest to model.
The consulting response. Expect McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Accenture, and Deloitte to either build a counter-vehicle, partner directly into one of these joint ventures, or pivot their AI transformation pricing to compete on speed and outcome guarantees. The first move from a top-five consultancy will reset the rest of the market.
Further Reading
Wall Street Journal: Anthropic Nears $1.5B Joint Venture With Wall Street Firms → wsj.com
TechCrunch: Anthropic and OpenAI Both Launching Enterprise AI Joint Ventures → techcrunch.com
Stripe: Forward Deployed AI Accelerator, Marketing → stripe.com
Heard on The Artificial Intelligence Show, Episode 214
Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput discuss the Anthropic and OpenAI joint ventures and what this means for existing consulting firms such as McKinsey and Accenture, and for knowledge workers. Listen →
Mike Kaput
Mike Kaput is the Chief Content Officer at SmarterX and a leading voice on the application of AI in business. He is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence and co-host of The Artificial Intelligence Show podcast.