Reports indicate that OpenAI is in negotiations with several private equity firms to establish a joint venture.

How can AI · OpenAI joint ventures help private equity firms respond to AI disruptions?

IT Home, March 16 — According to Reuters, four informed sources revealed that OpenAI is in advanced negotiations with several private equity firms, including TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital, and Brookfield Asset Management, to establish a joint venture. The goal is to promote their enterprise products to these firms’ portfolio companies and other sectors.

Two of the sources said the pre-money valuation of the deal is about $10 billion (IT Home note: approximately 69.1 billion RMB at current exchange rates). This move can help OpenAI more quickly penetrate the enterprise market and provide a potential “lifeline” for companies under AI disruption within these private equity firms.

Additionally, an informed source disclosed that Anthropic is also negotiating a joint venture with private equity firms, involving Blackstone, Permira, and Hellman & Friedman, planning to sell its Claude AI technology to the companies these firms have invested in.

The source stated that as part of the deal, these private equity firms would invest about $1 billion to acquire equity, but also cautioned that the details, including the amount, could still be adjusted, and no final agreement has been reached yet.

Last week, The Information reported that Anthropic, which developed Claude, has been in talks with Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman to establish a joint venture.

Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Permira declined to comment, and Anthropic did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Three sources said OpenAI will provide “preferred stock” in the joint venture, a type of equity that gives investors priority over common shareholders for returns and reduces downside risk.

In contrast, one person indicated that Anthropic offers common stock, which does not have these protections.

The background for these potential deals is that AI is disrupting the logic of private equity investing. Rapid AI development has impacted valuations across the software industry, making it harder for acquisition firms to assess deals reliably and posing long-term survival challenges for business models that could be automated out of existence.

In the enterprise AI market, Anthropic is generally considered to be ahead of OpenAI, with higher adoption rates among corporate clients. One source revealed that by the end of last month, OpenAI’s annualized total revenue was $25 billion, with $10 billion coming from enterprise business.

The source also said that this deal would help promote OpenAI’s enterprise product, Frontier. According to a Reuters report last month, the platform was launched last month and is the core of the “Frontier Alliances” plan — OpenAI will deploy engineers to collaborate with consulting giants like Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini to help companies integrate AI into their core business processes.

Fidji Simo, CEO of OpenAI’s application division, stated in an email to Reuters: “As demand for AI continues to surge, we want to help clients deploy these technologies in ways that create value. That’s why we recently announced the Frontier Alliance and are leveraging our partner ecosystem. We are also building a deployment team to work directly with enterprises and partners to deeply embed AI into their organizations. Once the details are finalized, we will share more information.”