Anthropic, OpenAI Push Enterprise AI Joint Ventures

Anthropic announced Monday a joint venture to deploy enterprise AI services.

• Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs joined as initial partners.
• According to WSJ reporting, the venture was valued at $1.5 billion, with Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman each committing $300 million.
• Participating investors include Apollo, General Atlantic, GIC, Leonard Green, and Sequoia Capital, among others.

On the same day, OpenAI was also reported to be preparing a new venture with a similar structure.

• Bloomberg reported that OpenAI's venture, being pursued under the name The Development Company, will raise $4 billion from 19 investors and launch at a $10 billion valuation.
• Investors include TPG, Brookfield Asset Management, Advent, and Bain Capital, among others.

The core logic behind both ventures is the same.

• Partner with alternative asset managers to expand sales channels to enterprise customers.
• Investors gain added value by bringing AI contracts to their portfolio companies.
• AI labs reinforce the FDE (forward-deployed engineer) model, putting more engineering resources into each customer's deployment.

Anthropic cited deployments where medical staff and IT teams co-design tools tailored to actual workflows as an example.

Meanwhile, both companies are navigating between aggressive fundraising and the possibility of an IPO.

• OpenAI announced new funding of $122 billion at a $852 billion valuation at the end of March.
• TechCrunch reported that Anthropic is in the final stages of closing new funding based on a $900 billion valuation.