Anthropic Launches Enterprise AI Firm With Wall Street Giants

Anthropic is launching a new venture focused on selling AI tools to enterprise companies.

This effort is being launched in partnership with Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street bank said Monday (May 4), in conjunction with investment firm Blackstone, and private equity group Hellman & Friedman, and will help companies embed Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence (AI) model into their businessses.

“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.”

Marc Nachmann, global head of asset and wealth management at Goldman Sachs, said the partnership will allow mid-market companies to employ Anthropic’s tech to bolster their businesses.

“By democratizing access to forward-deployed engineers, the new company can help the expansive network of portfolio companies in our Asset Management business and other companies of similar sizes accelerate AI adoption to grow and scale their operations,” he added.

In addition the founding partners, the new company is backed by a group of alternative asset managers including General Atlantic, Leonard Green, Apollo Global Management, GIC and Sequoia Capital, the release said.

While the announcement did not include financial figures, a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, said the partners are expected to commit $1.5 billion.

OpenAI has been in discussions to start a similar effort as the two rival AI companies focus on selling their offerings to businesses. Anthropic has established itself as the dominant player in the enterprise market, with revenues surging recently due to the popularity of its coding tool.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote last week about the issues facing enterprise buyers as they try to incorporate AI into their operations.

“Traditional software costs tracked headcount,” that report said. “AI costs track activity. A single employee can generate thousands of AI interactions in a day. Another may trigger none. An automated process can run continuously without anyone watching the bill.”

As covered here, enterprise AI invoices have begun to resemble utility bills more than software subscriptions, with charges based on model activity, not employee count.

“Finance teams built around stable annual renewals now manage a cost structure with no prior reference point,” PYMNTS added.

Costs can also compound further down. For every dollar spent on AI models, companies spend between $5 and $10 on integration, compliance and monitoring.

Research from PYMNTS Intelligence shows that more than 8 in 10 CFOs at large companies are either using or considering using AI, with AI pricing models continuing to evolve as adoption of the technology scales.