New day, new AI venture

Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman, and…Anthropic? No, this isn’t just a list of companies to invite to the least fun party of all time.

A group of Wall Street firms are teaming up with AI mega-unicorn Anthropic to create a new company that will teach mid-size companies how to use AI tools and deploy Claude in their business operations, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The new joint venture will be a consulting arm of Anthropic, and recruiting customers shouldn’t be a challenge, given it will be selling Anthropic’s products to firms backed by the very same asset managers funding the company in the first place.

Some pretty hefty dollar signs are behind this project.

• Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman are going to invest about $300 million each, according to the WSJ, while Goldman Sachs is investing about $150 million.
• Other investors include General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, Apollo Global Management, and GIC.
• Overall, roughly $1.5 billion is expected to be invested in the project.

AI giants are desperate to get the products they’ve spent billions creating out to actual customers. With this venture, Anthropic hopes it can implement Claude in a range of sectors, from healthcare to real estate and beyond.

The reason Anthropic is targeting private-equity-backed companies is that private equity investors are notorious for being ruthless with cost efficiency, so it makes intuitive sense that they would be all-in on superhuman robots that can operate quickly. Main competitor OpenAI has reportedly been contemplating a similar idea, putting together about $4 billion for its own PE-backed venture called The Development Company.

Anthropic is making moves

The announcement today comes as AI titans have embarked on a serious dealmaking spree recently, mostly focused within the tech world.

Just last week, the Department of Defense announced partnerships with eight tech firms, including OpenAI, Google, and Nvidia. Anthropic was excluded from the deal, given the Pentagon has been feuding with the startup over its objection to its tech being used for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Now, Wall Street is getting in on the deal action.

But be warned: Analysts have raised questions about the increasingly entangled nature of the circular web that is AI financing, warning that the entire economy could implode if it turns out we’re riding a wave of tech froth more than actual innovation. For now, the doubts haven’t stopped the giants from pushing full-steam ahead into all things AI.

And hey, when your startup replaces you with a bot, now you’ll know who to thank.—LB