Anthropic's joint venture aimed at accelerating enterprise adoption of its Claude chatbot has completed its inaugural acquisition since launching in July. The entity, known as Ode with Anthropic, announced Thursday that it is purchasing AI consulting company Casper Studios, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Casper Studios specializes in helping businesses build AI applications. The acquisition comes as corporate executives grapple with how to maximize AI's value while also managing concerns over the rising costs associated with the new technology.
"With the full suite of tools Anthropic has built on top of its large language models, enterprises can actually handle the vast majority of their business needs," said Ode CEO and co-founder Chris Taylor.
Casper Studios, which has been operating for four years, employs over a dozen technical consultants. Its client roster includes Netflix, PepsiCo, and numerous private equity firms and hedge funds. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Ode, headquartered in San Francisco, currently has more than 100 employees who frequently collaborate with Anthropic engineers to deploy AI projects across industries such as accounting and healthcare. The joint venture launched in July and previously acquired Fractional AI, an applied AI services provider co-founded by Taylor and Ode CTO Eddie Siegel.
Earlier this summer, Ode announced partnerships with IT consulting firms Baker Tilly and Citrin Cooperman to develop customized products. Anthropic is experiencing unprecedented business expansion, powered by its robust AI coding models that have gained strong traction among developers. Commercial clients, including retailer Restoration Hardware, are also purchasing Claude chatbots and associated tools to help employees automate tasks in finance and project management.
Anthropic faces competitive pressure from two directions: OpenAI is pivoting aggressively toward enterprise services, while open-source large language models enable buyers to reduce costs. However, both Anthropic and OpenAI acknowledge that implementing AI is far from straightforward for many companies, creating demand for consultants — essentially on-site engineers who assist with document organization and proprietary data integration, enabling AI systems to understand internal information while helping develop applications like customer service automation.
OpenAI itself has invested in The Deployment Co., a joint venture focused on enterprise AI sales. That company has raised $4 billion from investors including TPG, Brookfield, Bain Capital, and Advent International, at a post-money valuation of $10 billion. The Deployment Co. has used part of these funds to acquire several firms with hundreds of consultants dedicated to helping enterprises deploy customized AI models and systems.
Meanwhile, Thrive Holdings, a holding company founded a year ago by Thrive Capital — an Anthropic investor — has secured $2 billion in financing from external investors. The holding company invests in and operates multiple small accounting and services businesses, aiming to transform traditional industries through automation of routine tasks. OpenAI provides research, product, and engineering talent for the project, though companies under Thrive Holdings are not required to use OpenAI models and can choose open-source alternatives.
Ode was established by Anthropic together with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and Sequoia Capital, with these parties contributing a combined $1.5 billion to the new venture. Many of Ode's clients are themselves portfolio companies of the private equity firms involved in the investment.