Catenaa, Tuesday, May 05, 2026- The joint ventures OpenAI and Anthropic, separately created with private equity firms, are in talks to acquire services companies that help businesses deploy AI.
Reuters reported that the AI companies are looking to incorporate hundreds of engineers and consultants to help companies put their AI models to work, five of the people said.
The acquisitions would mark a new front in the competition for AI market share between the companies. While both have largely focused on building more powerful AI models, deploying them at scale requires a different kind of expertise, one they are now looking to buy.
OpenAI is raising roughly $4 billion from 19 investors, including TPG, Bain Capital, and Brookfield Asset Management, for its joint venture, Reuters previously reported.
The vehicle, called The Deployment Company, will be announced later this week, the report said.
Most of the capital raised through the joint ventures is expected to fund acquisitions of engineering services and consulting firms, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is private.
The move reflects a tension at the heart of the enterprise AI industry: what is often cast as a high-margin software business that could eliminate the need for consultants still depends on labor-intensive, highly skilled services.
That is because companies need engineers and consultants to tailor AI models to their specific data, systems, and workflows, and to adapt the software as business needs change.
Jon Gray, president and chief operating officer of Blackstone, said in a statement that hiring highly skilled workers will “break down one of the most significant bottlenecks to enterprise AI adoption.”
The approach mirrors Palantir’s model of embedding engineers inside customers’ operations to implement and adapt their software — a playbook the AI industry is now replicating at scale.
It also suggests OpenAI and Anthropic could consolidate a fragmented market of smaller consulting and IT services firms as they build dedicated deployment arms.
“We believe it can help break down one of the most significant bottlenecks to enterprise AI adoption by expanding the number of highly skilled implementation partners,” Gray said of Anthropic’s joint venture.
Anthropic is making a similar push by raising $1.5 billion from investors including Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The standalone firm will provide Claude AI integration services for businesses, utilising Anthropic’s engineering and partnership resources within its operational team.
It is supported by a group of institutional investors, including General Atlantic, Apollo Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Leonard Green, and GIC. This backing provides access to a wide business network for implementing and supporting enterprise AI.
The new entity will target the deployment of AI tools into existing business processes, focusing initially on portfolio companies of the founding investment firms as well as other qualifying organisations.
The firm’s engineers are set to collaborate directly with Anthropic’s research and product teams. This will help them adapt to rapid technological changes in Claude and other AI tools, enabling frequent updates and improvements.
The initiative aims to facilitate AI adoption for mid-sized companies in sectors including healthcare, retail, real estate, financial services, manufacturing, and infrastructure.
The company aims to address a reported scarcity of expertise in building and maintaining advanced AI systems. Its objective will be to support large-scale and competitive deployments for both investment firm-affiliated and independent organisations.
