Anthropic announced on May 4 that it has partnered with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman to launch a $1.5 billion enterprise AI services company, according to CNBC. The unnamed firm will embed Anthropic engineers directly inside mid-size businesses to redesign workflows and integrate Claude into core operations. OpenAI is pursuing a parallel structure, reportedly raising $4 billion from 19 investors at a $10 billion valuation for a vehicle called The Development Company, according to Indian Express citing Bloomberg.
Anthropic’s Play
The Anthropic venture draws backing from General Atlantic, Apollo Global Management, Leonard Green, Singapore’s GIC, and Sequoia Capital alongside the three founding partners, giving it a built-in client pipeline across hundreds of portfolio companies, Fortune reports.
“There’s a big shortage of people who know how to apply these tools into businesses and then transform them,” Goldman’s global head of asset and wealth management Marc Nachmann told CNBC. The venture is designed to tackle that bottleneck by pairing Claude models with embedded engineering teams.
Blackstone President Jon Gray framed the firm as addressing “one of the most significant bottlenecks to enterprise AI adoption,” per the official press release. The structure mirrors Palantir’s forward-deployment model: engineers embedded on-site, building with the model they know best, undercutting traditional consultants on both cost and speed.
Goldman and its partners plan to use their own portfolio companies as an initial proving ground before targeting other mid-sized companies across healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, retail, and real estate.
OpenAI’s Parallel Move
OpenAI’s Development Company targets a similar market from a different angle. At $4 billion in capital and a $10 billion valuation, it would operate at roughly three times Anthropic’s committed capital. Reuters reported in March that OpenAI was courting TPG and Bain Capital for the effort. The Indian Express reports that 19 investors are involved.
Both companies are making the same bet: that enterprise AI revenue will come from services and outcomes, not API calls. As Fortune notes, for every dollar companies spend on software, they spend six on services. Sequoia partner Julien Bek argued in April that the next great company will sell outcomes, not licenses.
What This Means for IT Services
The immediate competitive pressure falls on traditional consulting firms and IT services companies. The Anthropic venture offers PE sponsors a turnkey alternative to hiring Big Three consultants for AI transformation. With built-in access to the underlying model and dedicated engineering talent, the new entity can skip the integration layer that makes traditional consulting engagements expensive and slow.
For agent builders, the signal is clear: frontier labs are no longer content to sell picks and shovels. They want to own the implementation layer where enterprise value gets captured, and they have the capital partners to reach hundreds of companies simultaneously.