Anthropic plans to invest $200 million to establish a new private equity joint venture

Anthropic plans to collaborate with several large private equity firms to invest $200 million in establishing a new company, which will sell AI tools to the latter’s portfolio companies, continuously expanding enterprise client business.

According to informed sources, private equity firms such as the Atlantic Investment Group, Blackstone Group, and Herman & Friedman are involved in negotiations, intending to support the project. The startup is also raising $1 billion in funding for this initiative.

This new company will serve as a consulting branch of Anthropic, helping various enterprises understand how to integrate their AI tools into daily operations.

Anthropic is competing fiercely with OpenAI for enterprise clients seeking to boost productivity through AI. Both companies believe that widespread application of their AI tools across various industries in the U.S. will generate significant financial returns, leading them to continue investing heavily to attract such clients.

OpenAI is also in talks with multiple private equity firms to form a competing joint venture to promote its own AI tools. Recently, the company appointed its Chief Operating Officer to oversee this project (internally codenamed DeployCo) and related work. OpenAI executive Figi Simo posted on X platform last month that the project will dispatch engineers to partner companies to provide technical guidance.

Media reports have previously revealed some details of Anthropic’s joint venture plan.

The reason private equity firms are targeted clients partly stems from their focus on cost reduction. Additionally, private equity companies can centrally drive technological adoption decisions across their entire investment portfolio.

Some investment firms have individually invested hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire companies in accounting, customer service, and other industries to automate business processes through AI.

Anthropic is increasingly guiding clients to utilize AI not only to improve employee efficiency but also to achieve larger-scale automation of enterprise functions. Last month, the company announced a $100 million investment to support training and technical assistance for consulting firms helping enterprises adopt Claude.

Anthropic’s revenue mainly comes from enterprise clients using its Claude chatbot and programming tools. The company recently stated that its annual revenue could exceed $30 billion and is in talks with multiple banks to discuss potential initial public offerings.