Blackstone and Goldman back $1.5bn Anthropic joint venture

In short: Anthropic is forming a $1.5bn joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and other investors to create a new consulting business focused on using Anthropic’s AI in investment portfolios.

What happened

Anthropic, an AI company known for its Claude products, has formed a $1.5bn joint venture with Wall Street groups including Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman. The goal is to help these firms use Anthropic’s AI across the companies they own or invest in.

The joint venture will fund a new consulting company that has not yet been named. It is expected to be announced on Monday, according to the Financial Times. Think of it like hiring a specialist team to help many different businesses set up and use the same set of AI tools, instead of each company figuring it out alone.

According to people briefed on the matter, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman will each put in $300 million at the start. Goldman Sachs and General Atlantic will also commit $150 million each.

The venture is partly about opening new ways for Anthropic to make money. Anthropic has been spending heavily on data centers, which are large buildings full of computers that run AI systems (like a power plant, but for computing).

Why it matters

Big investment firms own stakes in thousands of companies, from offices and infrastructure to software and industrial businesses. If they can use AI to cut costs or work faster across many of those companies, it could affect jobs, pricing, and the tools businesses use. The Financial Times also reports that OpenAI, a rival to Anthropic, is discussing a similar kind of deal with other Wall Street firms.

Source: Financial Times