The joint venture established by Anthropic alongside Wall Street firms such as Blackstone to boost enterprise growth for its Claude chatbot has completed its inaugural acquisition since launching in July.
The venture, known as Ode with Anthropic, revealed plans to announce the purchase of AI consulting firm Casper Studios on Thursday. This consultancy specializes in assisting companies with developing AI applications. The deal arrives as corporate executives navigate how to maximize AI's value while simultaneously wrestling with rising technology costs, a backdrop that shaped Ode's decision to move forward.
"With the full suite of tools Anthropic has built on its own large language models, enterprises can effectively address the vast majority of their operational requirements," said Chris Taylor, CEO and co-founder of Ode.
Casper Studios, established four years ago, employs over a dozen technical consultants and counts Netflix, Pepsi, multiple private equity firms, and hedge funds among its clientele. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Ode boasts a workforce exceeding 100 employees who frequently collaborate with Anthropic engineers to deploy AI technology across sectors like accounting and healthcare. Since its official debut in July, the venture had previously acquired Fractional AI, an applied AI services provider co-founded by Taylor and Ode's CTO Eddie Siegel.
In early summer, Ode announced partnerships with IT consultancies Baker Tilly and Citrin Cooperman to develop customized products.
Anthropic is experiencing unprecedented growth, fueled primarily by its AI coding model. Despite substantial increases in per-user costs, developers continue to favor this model. Retailers like Restoration Hardware have also adopted Anthropic's Claude chatbot and supporting tools to automate functions ranging from finance to project management for their staff.
Anthropic currently faces competitive pressure from two fronts: OpenAI, which is pivoting toward enterprise operations, and open-source large language models that offer cost-saving alternatives for clients.
However, both Anthropic and OpenAI acknowledge that deploying AI proves challenging for certain businesses, spurring demand for consultants, also known as resident engineers. These advisors work on-site with clients to organize corporate documents and proprietary internal data, enabling AI systems to interpret and process it, while also helping build business applications like customer service automation.
OpenAI itself has invested in The Deployment, a joint venture marketing AI products to enterprises. That company raised $4 billion from investors including TPG, Brookfield Asset Management, Bain Capital, and Advent International, achieving a post-money valuation of $10 billion. The Deployment Co. has already used some of its fresh capital to acquire firms employing hundreds of consultants dedicated to helping clients implement custom AI models and systems.
Meanwhile, Thrive Holdings, a holding company established a year ago by OpenAI investor Thrive Capital, recently completed $2 billion in external financing. The firm takes equity stakes in and operates a portfolio of mid-sized accounting and services businesses, aiming to modernize these traditional industries through process automation. OpenAI provides research, product, and engineering support for the project, though Thrive Holdings' portfolio companies are not restricted to using OpenAI models exclusively and may select open-source or other third-party alternatives.
Ode was co-founded by Anthropic with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and Sequoia Capital, with investors committing a combined $1.5 billion to the new venture. A significant portion of Ode's client base comes from portfolio companies owned by these private equity backers.