GoKawiilThe battle for corporate AI dominance just got a $1.5 billion war chest, courtesy of some Wall Street heavy hitters.
Anthropic is teaming up with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs to form a new AI services company targeting private equity-backed businesses. Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Anthropic are each investing around $300 million, with Goldman Sachs putting in $150 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. General Atlantic, Leonard Green, Apollo Global Management, GIC and Sequoia Capital are also backing the venture. The firm will deploy engineers to work directly with community banks, regional hospitals and mid-sized manufacturers to build custom Claude-powered solutions.
The move comes as OpenAI is forming a rival joint venture with private equity firms. Both AI giants see PE-backed companies as prime targets since they’re already focused on efficiency and cost-cutting. Anthropic is widely seen as the industry leader in selling AI to businesses, though OpenAI is working to catch up. Anthropic is also eyeing a public listing as soon as this year, fueled by skyrocketing revenue from its coding tool, Claude Code.