Five weeks after launching its own deployment company with $4 billion in multilayered funding, OpenAI has further revealed its intentions to become a major force in the enterprise by launching a partner network with a $150-million fund to create a global force-multiplying AI ecosystem.
The two massive and tightly coupled go-to-market moves by OpenAI demonstrate not only its serious commitment to becoming a serious B2B player in the greatest growth market the world has ever known but also the high-level wager on partners that Sam Altman and his team are placing.
We’ll explore this in two steps: first, an overview of the new OpenAI Partner Network led by newcomer Colleen Kapase, who spent the last few years building the Google Cloud ecosystem; and second, a look at the OpenAI Deployment Company, which, while majority-owned by OpenAI, is also tightly intertwined with major ecosystem players.
OpenAI Partner Network
I was heartened to see that while OpenAI is one of the world’s pre-eminent AI-technology companies, the focus of its partner network will be on driving quantifiable customer outcomes rather than deep debates over technology superiority. From the OpenAI press release:
Instead, it’s how organizations repeatably identify the right use cases, redesign workflows, integrate with existing systems, and drive adoption and change management at scale.
Helping every organization adopt OpenAI frontier models and products and turn them into measurable impact requires an ecosystem of trusted partners with deep industry expertise, global delivery capacity, and customer relationships….
Organizations across every industry are ready to transform how they operate with AI. But executing that change well requires both access to frontier models and clear strategy, secure integration with enterprise systems and data, workflow redesign, responsible deployment, and change management that helps people adopt new ways of working.
To help the partners within its new network match the speed and intensity of OpenAI’s aspirations, the Partner Network has a $150-million investment fund to “help partners bring the benefits of AI to more organizations more quickly.”
One other insight into OpenAI’s aspirations is the company’s commitment to having 300,000 certified consultants in place by the end of the year. Assuming the current number of certified consultants is pretty low, that’s a torrid pace OpenAI is mapping out: about 50,000 per month, or about 170 newly certified OpenAI partner consultants every single day, seven days a week, through the end of 2026.
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The OpenAI Deployment Company
This is the other element within the OpenAI go-to-market blitz. Launched on May 11, this unit within OpenAI currently consists largely of employees of recently acquired Tomoro, which OpenAI described as “an applied AI consulting and engineering firm that helps enterprises turn AI into operational advantage.”
This team currently has about 150 FDEs, and OpenAI plans to boost that number rapidly to 250. So, without question this is an OpenAI business unit staffed with OpenAI employees, as opposed to being an ecosystem partner.
But here’s where OpenAI is looking to aggressively leverage partnership-power within this internal unit: while OpenAI is the majority owner of the OpenAI Deployment Co., outside investors —including tech-focused investment firms, consultancies, and SIs — together hold a sizable stake in the deployment unit.
Since those outside firms have kicked in the significant amount of the $4 billion capitalization that OpenAI Deployment Co. enjoys at its launch, we can certainly expect those companies — including Capgemini and McKinsey — to evangelize OpenAI among their existing contacts. From the OpenAI press release:
The OpenAI Deployment Company is a committed partnership between OpenAI and 19 leading global investment firms, consultancies, and system integrators. The partnership is led by TPG, with Advent, Bain Capital, and Brookfield as co-lead founding partners, and B Capital, BBVA, Emergence Capital, Goanna, Goldman Sachs, SoftBank Corp., Warburg Pincus, and WCAS as founding partners.
Investors also include leading consulting and systems integration firms, including Bain & Company, Capgemini, and McKinsey & Company. The Deployment Company will also work closely with and alongside OpenAI’s Frontier Alliance partners and the broader industry to drive AI adoption and change management globally.
The OpenAI Deployment Company is majority-owned and controlled by OpenAI, giving customers a unified experience whether they work with OpenAI, the OpenAI Deployment Company, or both. It will launch with more than $4 billion of initial investment, which it will use to scale operations and acquire firms that can accelerate our mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
Final Thought
OpenAI’s Kapase, whose formal title is VP, strategic global partnerships and ecosystems, is a highly regarded ecosystem leader who’s made huge contributions to the ecosystem programs at Google Cloud (as noted agove), Snowflake, and VMware. On top of her expertise around partners and what customers expect from them, she also brings a strong awareness of the intense pressure customers are facing to not just undertake these AI transformations but to do so with great urgency and an end-to-end vision.
Either one of these new GTM adventures from OpenAI would likely make a huge impact in the market. But together they will ensure that the level of competitive excellence and intensity in the Cloud Wars only accelerate, further ensuring that the big winners in the Cloud Wars are always — always — the customers.
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