Dive Brief:
- OpenAI launched a standalone consulting business to provide organizations with AI adoption assistance, the model builder said in a Monday announcement. The venture was seeded with $4 billion from OpenAI and 19 additional investors led by TPG and co-partners Advent, Bain Capital and Brookfield.
- The OpenAI Deployment Company will use the funding to send teams of forward-deployed engineers into the field and deepen its bench of AI talent via acquisitions, OpenAI said. The launch was accompanied by the acquisition of AI consulting firm Tomoro and its roughly 150 AI engineers and deployment specialists.
- “AI is becoming capable of doing increasingly meaningful work,” OpenAI CRO Denise Dresser said in the announcement. “The challenge now is helping companies integrate these systems into the infrastructure and workflows that power their businesses. DeployCo is designed to help organizations bridge 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 impediments and cost concerns. It also brings into clearer focus a strategic expansion from pure research and development to enterprise enablement.
“OpenAI’s moves are a recognition that the download-and-go end user distribution model accelerates user adoption but not enterprise adoption,” Mitch Ashley, VP and practice lead, software lifecycle engineering, at The Futurum Group told Channel Dive via email.
Successful deployment at the enterprise level requires systems integrators to guide technology strategy, use case feasibility and model selection, Ashley added.
“OpenAI is left out of the game without a strong partner ecosystem of SIs steeped in OpenAI and Codex implementation success,” he said.
OpenAI formalized its web of integration and consulting partnerships in February with Frontier Alliances, an enterprise enablement pact it cemented with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Accenture and Capgemini. The initiative included forward-deployed engineering teams working alongside partners to help enterprise clients adopt and adapt to AI. In December, OpenAI got its foot in the door of the IT services industry through an ownership investment in Thrive Holdings, an MSP-focused arm of Thrive Capital.
The upmarket shift to GSIs was inevitable, according to Peter Bryant, GSI practice lead at Omdia, a Channel Dive sister company.
“Something as complex as agentic AI requires consulting help,” Bryant said, pointing to the enterprise AI services company created by OpenAI competitor Anthropic last week. “Rather than being the death of consulting, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are going to rely on the GSIs and consulting firms to accelerate the point of value.”
Omdia expects more than $1 trillion to flow through the systems integrator market this year, driving compound annual growth of 6.5% through 2031. The forward-deployed engineering tactics touted by OpenAI and Anthropic are also gaining ground.
“With the pace of change as rapid as it is, FDEs are going to be critical in converting opportunities to revenue,” Bryant said. “Enterprises don't really have the patience at the moment to wait for the partners to get trained up, because by the time they do, the newest model comes out.”
Owning an engineering consulting firm gives OpenAI stakes in both sides of the AI equation — model choice and deployment strategy.
“OpenAI is going after the implementation revenue that today flows through Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant and others,” Jessica Davis, managed service practice principal analyst at Omdia, told Channel Dive. “Private equity backing gives them captive distribution into thousands of portfolio companies.”
