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Diving overview:
- OpenAI has launched a standalone consulting business to provide AI implementation assistance to organizations, the model builder said in an announcement Monday. The venture was seeded with $4 billion from OpenAI and 19 additional investors led by TPG and co-partners Advent, Bain Capital, and Brookfield.
- OpenAI implementation companies will use the funding to forward-deploy teams of engineers into the field and strengthen their AI talent pool through acquisitions, OpenAI said. The launch was accompanied by the acquisition of AI consulting firm Tomoro and its approximately 150 AI engineers and implementation specialists.
- “AI is increasingly capable of doing meaningful work,” OpenAI CRO Dennis Dresser said in the announcement. “The challenge now is to help enterprises integrate these systems into the infrastructure and workflows that drive their business. DeployCo is designed to help organizations fill that gap.”
Dive Insight:
OpenAI’s foray into consulting comes at an inflection point for the generative AI capabilities it pioneered as organizations grapple with adoption hurdles and cost concerns. We will also focus more clearly on our strategic expansion from pure R&D to enterprise enablement.
“OpenAI’s move is a recognition that the download-and-go end-user distribution model drives user adoption, but not enterprise adoption,” Mitch Ashley, vice president and practice lead for software lifecycle engineering at Futurum Group, told Channel Dive via email.
For successful enterprise-level implementation, systems integrators need to guide technology strategy, use case feasibility, and model selection, Ashley added.
“Without a strong partner ecosystem at SI, steeped in the success of OpenAI and Codex implementations, OpenAI will be left out of the game,” he said.
In February, OpenAI formalized its integration and consulting partnership with Frontier Alliances, an enterprise enablement agreement with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Accenture, and Capgemini. This effort included forward-deploying engineering teams working with partners to help enterprise clients adopt and adapt to AI. In December, OpenAI got its foot in the IT services industry door through an ownership investment in Thrive Holdings, the MSP-focused arm of Thrive Capital.
Peter Bryant, GSI practice lead at Omdia, a sister company of Channel Dive, said the move to GSI luxury was inevitable.
“Something as complex as agent AI requires consulting help,” Bryant said, referring to the enterprise AI services company OpenAI competitor Anthropic launched last week. “Rather than eliminating consulting, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic will rely on GSIs and consulting firms to accelerate value growth.”
Omdia predicts more than $1 trillion will flow into the system integrator market this year, with compound annual growth of 6.5% through 2031. The advanced engineering strategies promoted by OpenAI and Anthropic are also becoming more popular.
“With such a rapid pace of change, FDE will be critical in turning opportunities into revenue,” Bryant said. “Right now, companies can’t wait patiently for their partners to get trained, because by the time they do, the latest models are out.”
Owning an engineering consulting firm allows OpenAI to be involved on both sides of the AI equation: model selection and deployment strategy.
“OpenAI is going after the implementation revenue that currently flows through Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant and others,” Jessica Davis, principal analyst in Omdia’s managed services practice, told Channel Dive. “Private equity backing enables captive distribution to thousands of portfolio companies.”
