Exclusive-OpenAI courts private equity to join enterprise AI venture, sources say
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NEW YORK, March 16 : OpenAI is in advanced talks with private equity firms including TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital and Brookfield Asset Management to form a joint venture that would distribute its enterprise products across the firms' portfolio companies and beyond, four people familiar with the matter said.
The proposed deal has a pre-money valuation of about $10 billion, two of the people said, and could give OpenAI a faster route into corporate adoption while providing the PE firms with a potential lifeline for companies in their portfolios that are exposed to AI disruption.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are aggressively courting private equity firms because they control enterprise companies and influence how businesses budget for software and AI, three of the people said — a race growing more urgent as both companies vie to go public as soon as this year.
OpenAI declined to comment on the joint venture plans. Advent, TPG and Brookfield declined to comment. Bain did not respond to requests for comment.
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Under the proposed arrangement, the private equity investors would commit about $4 billion and receive equity stakes in the venture, along with influence over how OpenAI’s technology is deployed across their portfolio companies, two of the people said.
TPG would serve as the anchor investor, committing the most capital, while Advent, Bain, and Brookfield would participate as co-founding investors. All four firms would secure board seats in the joint venture, according to people familiar with the matter, cautioning that no final decision has been taken and the plans are subject to change.
The arrangement would also give the PE firms early access to OpenAI’s enterprise tools and the potential to benefit when adoption expands beyond their portfolios, two people familiar with the talks said.
Sources requested anonymity because the discussions are private.
Anthropic is also in discussions with private equity firms, including Blackstone, Permira, and Hellman & Friedman, to form a joint venture that would sell its Claude AI technology to companies backed by those firms, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.
As part of the deal, the PE firms would take an equity stake of approximately $1 billion, the person said, cautioning that the plans — including the figures — are subject to change and no final agreement has been reached.
The Information first reported last week that the Claude maker has been in discussions with Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman to form a joint venture.
Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Permira declined to comment, while Anthropic did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
OpenAI is offering “preferred equity” in the venture — a senior class of ownership that gives investors priority returns over common shareholders and limits their downside, three of the people said.
In contrast, Anthropic is offering common equity, which does not come with those protections, one of the people said.
The potential deals come as AI upends the calculus of private equity investing. The rapid advance of AI has rattled valuations across the software sector, made it harder for buyout firms to underwrite deals with confidence, and raised uncomfortable questions about the long-term viability of business models that automation could render obsolete.
In the enterprise AI market, Anthropic is widely seen as ahead of OpenAI, with stronger adoption among corporate clients. As of the end of last month, OpenAI's enterprise business generated $10 billion out of a total annualized revenue of $25 billion, one of the people said.
The deal could also help distribute OpenAI’s enterprise offering, Frontier, one of the people said. Launched last month, the platform anchors a program called Frontier Alliances — through which OpenAI pairs its forward-deployed engineers with consulting giants BCG, McKinsey, Accenture and Capgemini to help companies integrate AI agents into core business processes, Reuters reported last month.
"As demand for AI continues to skyrocket, we want to help our customers deploy these technologies in all the ways that help them create impact," Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI, said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
"That's why we recently announced Frontier Alliances to leverage our ecosystem of partners, and that's why we're also building a deployment arm that works directly with enterprises and partners to deeply embed AI throughout their organizations. We'll have more to share when details are finalized," Simo said.
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