Anthropic Launches Rival $1.5B Enterprise AI Joint Venture With Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman

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Announced within minutes of OpenAI's deal on May 4, Anthropic formed a $1.5B joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman, General Atlantic, Apollo, GIC, Leonard Green, and Sequoia Capital — with no investor overlap between the two ventures. Unlike OpenAI's product-deployment model, Anthropic's approach uses forward-deployed engineers embedded inside companies to redesign workflows, explicitly targeting the consulting industry. Fortune reports Anthropic is positioning this as a shot at McKinsey-style services, pairing Claude models with a built-in network of investor-owned companies.