On Monday, Anthropic and OpenAI simultaneously launched mixed-capital partnerships to accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence in businesses. Both labs use the same mechanism: raising capital from investment funds to create privileged distribution channels into the corporate sector. The move aims to get companies to integrate their models without having to directly deal with the technical complexity of LLMs.
External funds and direct access to proprietary models 🚀
The structure of these partnerships allows external capital to finance infrastructure and support, while the labs retain control over intellectual property and the model roadmap. Anthropic has formed the Anthropic Fund with Menlo Ventures, and OpenAI has created the OpenAI Startup Fund with several venture firms. The goal is to offer medium and large companies a subscription that includes fine-tuning, security, and consulting, avoiding the cost of training models from scratch.
The new bargain: selling AI without getting your hands dirty 😏
So, now the labs partner with investment funds so that others put up the money and they take the credit. It's like setting up a restaurant where you provide the secret recipe, the partner provides the location, and customers pay to sit down. The funniest part is that companies will buy packaged AI as if it were Iberian ham, without asking if the pig was really happy. At least, if the AI hallucinates, they'll know who to blame.