OpenAI and Anthropic just outsourced their sales teams to private equity 🤑💸; A 3-year-old firm nobody’s heard of just bought the world’s largest corporate travel company 😳✈️
FinTech is Eating the World, 5 May
Hey Everyone,
Good morning & happy Tuesday! Today we’re diving into AI giants OpenAI & Anthropic, which just outsourced their sales teams to private equity (breaking down their PE playbook, why it matters & what to expect next + bonus deep dives into OpenAI that wants to build the last App Store while also developing a personal AI CFO, & Anthropic’s AWS strategy), and a 3-year-old firm nobody’s heard of that just bought the world’s largest corporate travel company (why Long Lake Management is acquiring Amex GBT, and what it means for Ramp, Brex and Navan + bonus deep dives into American Express and why it skipped the Agent Protocol wars & Anthropic, which just told founders exactly what AI products to build in 2026). Let’s jump straight into the fascinating stuff 🌶️
OpenAI and Anthropic just outsourced their sales teams to private equity 🤑💸
The news 🗞️ The two leading AI labs stopped pretending software sells itself.
On the same day, OpenAI and Anthropic each finalized & signed joint ventures with the biggest names in private equity - TPG, Blackstone BX 0.00%↑, Goldman Sachs GS 0.00%↑, and Bain Capital - to physically embed their engineers inside thousands of portfolio companies.
The combined capital committed: over $5.5 billion. The model: Palantir’s PLNT 0.00%↑ forward-deployed playbook, scaled to the entire mid-market economy in one move.
One of these deals includes a 17.5% guaranteed annual return to investors, which is either a masterstroke or a ticking liability on top of $14 billion in projected losses. The other offers no guarantee at all, and that contrast tells you almost everything about where these two companies stand heading into their IPOs. For fintech operators and financial services investors, Goldman’s involvement on the Anthropic side opens a direct pipeline into wealth management, lending, and insurance portfolios that most startups spend years trying to reach. And that could be huge.
Let’s break down the deal structures, the real competitive implications for enterprise software & consulting, and the 3 specific things to watch over the next 12 months.
