OpenAI has launched a new venture aimed at helping large organisations build and operate artificial-intelligence systems, formalising a push into deployment and consulting work that extends well beyond the company’s core role as a model developer.
The OpenAI Deployment Company, known internally as DeployCo, is starting with $4 billion of investment at a $10 billion pre-money valuation. OpenAI will retain majority control of the business.
The venture is structured as a partnership between OpenAI and 19 investment firms, consultancies and systems integrators. It is led by the private-equity firm TPG, with Advent, Bain Capital and Brookfield as co-lead founding partners.
Investors also include the consulting and integration firms Bain & Company, Capgemini and McKinsey & Company, signalling close ties with the established advisory industry that the new company will in part compete against.
DeployCo plans to place engineers who specialise in frontier AI deployment directly inside client organisations, working with internal teams to identify where the technology can have the greatest effect. To build out its workforce, it will acquire the AI consultancy Tomoro, bringing about 150 engineers and deployment specialists from the outset.
Shares in several Indian IT services companies fell after the announcement, as investors weighed the prospect of a well-funded new competitor in a market those firms have long dominated.