OpenAI in talks with private equity on AI venture: sources

OpenAI is in advanced talks with several private equity firms to form a joint venture that would distribute its enterprise products across PE portfolios and beyond, sources familiar with the matter said.

No final decision has been taken and the plans are subject to change.

Sources named TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital, and Brookfield Asset Management as potential partners, said the proposed deal has a pre‑money valuation near US$10 billion and could involve about US$4 billion in commitments, with TPG serving as the anchor investor committing the most capital; the private equity investors would receive equity stakes in the venture and influence how the technology is deployed across their portfolio companies, and all four firms would secure board seats, the sources said.

Advent, TPG, and Brookfield declined to comment; Bain did not respond.

Anthropic is also in discussions with private equity firms including Blackstone, Permira, and Hellman & Friedman about a separate joint venture to sell its Claude AI technology to portfolio companies, a person said, and the private equity firms would take an equity stake of about US$1 billion; the plans are subject to change.

Blackstone, Permira, and Hellman & Friedman declined to comment; Anthropic did not respond.

People familiar with the talks said OpenAI is offering preferred equity in its deal, while Anthropic would offer common equity, a difference that affects investor protections.

Sources said both AI companies are courting private equity because PE firms control many enterprise buyers and because AI is reshaping software valuations and dealmaking.

OpenAI declined to comment on the joint venture and Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of applications at OpenAI, said in an emailed statement that the company is building a deployment arm called Frontier Alliances to work directly with enterprises and will share details when finalized.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Anthropic’s enterprise momentum is tightening competitive pressure on OpenAI

Deals with large buyers arrive as enterprise AI spending shifts, with Anthropic gaining traction while OpenAI still sits in many company stacks.
In coding, Anthropic holds 42% share versus OpenAI’s 21% 1.
Another estimate puts Anthropic at 32% of overall corporate AI use versus OpenAI’s 25% 1.
The gap lines up with revenue mix. Enterprise customers bring in 80% of Anthropic’s revenue, while businesses account for about 30% of OpenAI’s revenue 1.
Money pressure keeps rising. OpenAI projects $74 billion in cumulative operating losses by 2028, and Anthropic expects to break even that year, which makes scalable enterprise distribution through private equity firms’ portfolio companies a practical route for OpenAI’s long-term viability 1.

AI is the new operational playbook for private equity

Private equity is treating AI as a standard way to improve operations across holdings. In the U.S., the private equity market is forecast to reach $1.40 trillion by 2031 2.
PE firms increasingly focus on “cross-functional portfolio optimization” 3, and these efforts offer a repeatable way to roll out AI across thousands of portfolio companies at once 4.
Another benefit comes from iteration. Firms can deploy AI in sectors like healthcare and technology 5, then use proprietary usage data to improve models for enterprise workflows 6.
Over time, a firm’s ability to roll out AI at scale could become a competitive edge, similar to today’s operational improvement or financial engineering expertise 7.