OpenAI Raises $4 Billion to Help Enterprises Deploy AI

That’s according to a report Monday (May 4) from Bloomberg News, citing a source familiar with the matter.

This source says that the venture, known as The Deployment Company, is backed by several investment firms, with the deal valuing the company at $10 billion. The source added that partners for OpenAI’s new joint venture will get access to more than 2,000 portfolio companies and clients.

PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The news follows previous reports that OpenAI was at work on a project to increase enterprise adoption of its artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

It also came the same day that rival AI startup Anthropic announced a similar venture, teaming with Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and several other Wall Street firms to help companies embed Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence (AI) model into their businesses.

“Enterprise demand for Claude is significantly outpacing any single delivery model,” Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s finance chief, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS.

“Our partnerships with the world’s leading systems integrators are central to how Claude reaches large enterprises. This new firm brings additional operating capability to the ecosystem and capital from leading alternative asset managers.”

As Bloomberg notes, the two companies have been rushing to get more businesses to pay for their AI software as they prepare to go public, something that could happen as soon as this year. OpenAI recently moved Brad Lightcap, its operations chief, into a new role handling special projects, including its effort to land enterprise customers, Bloomberg added.

Recent weeks have also seen reports of conflict within OpenAI between CEO Sam Altman and CFO Sarah Friar about the timing on the initial public offering (IPO), as well as word that the company had missed key internal targets. OpenAI has denied these claims.

PYMNTS wrote recently about the way enterprises are rethinking their AI spending as companies shift their pricing practices.

“AI tools that embedded themselves inside engineering workflows as productivity aids are now line items with variable, consumption-driven costs,” that report said. “Enterprises that adopted them at scale without modeling actual usage are finding invoices that don’t match budgets.”

Organizational readiness is still the most cited barrier to AI adoption at bigger companies. A little more than 71% of executives at companies with at least $1 billion in yearly revenue named it as the chief limit on AI performance, according to research by PYMNTS Intelligence. Just 11% said the technology itself is the main obstacle.