作者：Wall Street CN

OpenAI is significantly expanding its enterprise services team, planning to hire hundreds of technical consultants to help large enterprises develop customized AI applications and automate employee tasks. This move aims to strengthen its competitiveness in the enterprise market and counter the offensive of its main rival, Anthropic, in the enterprise services field.

According to a report by The Information on Friday, sources familiar with the matter revealed that OpenAI is expanding its team of front-end deployment engineers, who are specialists capable of customizing OpenAI models using customers' own data. The company currently has approximately 60 such engineers, along with over 200 members in its technical customer success team, for a total workforce of around 4,000.

This hiring aligns with OpenAI's upcoming launch of a new enterprise product that will integrate various AI-related needs for businesses. Strengthening its enterprise customer base could help it attract investors—according to sources familiar with the matter, company executives have already held informal discussions with banks and law firms regarding an initial public offering as early as the fourth quarter of this year.

OpenAI hopes to achieve this through these initiatives.The company aims to increase the proportion of revenue from enterprise customers from approximately 40% in January to 50% by the end of the year, and achieve approximately $15 billion in enterprise revenue by 2026.

Expand the consulting team to emulate the Palantir model

OpenAI is emulating Palantir's success, which achieved rapid growth by helping clients transform their backend systems and utilize AI. These technology consultants could develop AI-powered customer service response systems for T-Mobile or assist Intuit in providing tax preparation services to its clients.

The company has been employing technical staff to assist enterprises in implementing AI for years, but last year it significantly accelerated its recruitment of these specialized engineers. These engineers will be responsible for implementing OpenAI's new enterprise products and designing practical AI applications for large enterprise clients.

Accelerate the layout of corporate cooperation

OpenAI has been actively pursuing enterprise partnerships recently. This week, the company signed a multi-year, $200 million agreement with Snowflake to integrate OpenAI models into the database management company's application building services and equip its employees with an enterprise version of ChatGPT.

In addition, OpenAI is discussing special business arrangements with Amazon, whereby its researchers and engineers will help customize AI for Amazon products such as Alexa. The company also announced further collaborations with major consulting firms such as Accenture, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Slalom.

OpenAI has signed multi-year agreements with seven clients, each worth at least $100 million, and another six clients with agreements worth at least $75 million, with the potential to grow to over $100 million.These agreements typically include employee ChatGPT subscriptions, access to AI models via API, and support for building applications or AI agents.

Competing in the corporate market with Anthropic

Rival Anthropic is also making strides in the enterprise services sector. The company uses so-called application AI engineers to support enterprise clients, partners with consulting firms such as Cognizant, Accenture, and Deloitte, and provides on-site support to clients through cloud service providers like Amazon.

In December of last year, Anthropic projected that it would achieve $18 billion in revenue by the end of this year, the vast majority of which would come from selling access to its AI models to developers and enterprises. According to investment bankers advising on its IPO, Anthropic is expected to go public later this year or early next year.