Anthropic has set up a joint venture, Ode, with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs to handle enterprise AI adoption and deployment.

TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that Ode was created on the view that better models alone are not enough to secure corporate customers. OpenAI also runs “The Deployment Company” as a separate business, highlighting a trend among leading AI companies to expand businesses that build AI in real corporate settings.

Blackstone conceived the business first. As Blackstone introduced AI across its portfolio companies, it used large consultancies alongside smaller AI services firms, and Fractional AI stood out among them. Ode acquired Fractional AI soon after the joint venture launched, and Fractional AI ended its collaboration with OpenAI.

Ode currently has 100 engineers. They work with Anthropic’s applied AI team to identify areas where AI can be effective for each company and build systems tailored to how each organisation operates. Anthropic’s internal team will continue to focus on strategically important deployments.

Its operating principle is “Claude first.” Ode applies Anthropic technology first where possible and also uses features such as Slack Claude tags.