Ode with Anthropic Launches as $1.5B Firm to Fix Enterprise AI Deployment Gap

Inside Ode with Anthropic, the startup betting AI services are the future of enterprise

Can a handful of engineers really do the work of an army of consultants? That's the bet behind Ode with Anthropic -- the joint venture dedicated to embedding forward-deployed engineers in enterprise firms, backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others. On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Ode's leaders Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel, who founded Fractional AI, the applied AI services startup that Ode acquired earlier this year to serve as the new venture's core. The three discuss why so many enterprise AI pilots never make it to production and why they think AI-native services are about to become one of the biggest categories in tech. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Anthropic and Blackstone launch Ode, an AI implementation firm

Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman have launched Ode, a $1.5bn AI implementation firm. The bet: the next fortune in AI is in deployment, not models. The race in AI has been about who builds the best model. A new company backed by Anthropic thinks the real money sits elsewhere: in getting those models to actually work inside big companies. That company is Ode with Anthropic, and it launched under its full name this week, the partners said. Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman set it up as a $1.5 billion venture, TechCrunch first reported. The pitch Ode sells AI implementation. It sends small teams of senior engineers into a business, finds where AI can help, then builds the systems that do it. The founders call it a "Claude-first" approach, using Anthropic's models where they can, and rivals where they cannot. The ambition is blunt. Chief executive Chris Taylor told TechCrunch it is "pretty easy to imagine this as a trillion-dollar company someday if we execute well." Most enterprise AI pilots never reach production. Ode wants to be the firm that closes that gap. Special forces, not an army The company runs on about 100 engineers, and more than half once founded their own startups. One Blackstone executive called them "special forces," not a mass of forward-deployed engineers. Ode is built on Fractional AI, an applied-AI boutique it bought in May. Blackstone had spotted the startup while wiring AI into its own portfolio companies. Fractional ended an 11-month partnership with OpenAI when the deal closed. Its founders, Taylor and Eddie Siegel, now run Ode. Siegel plays down the model wars. "Model selection matters, but it's not where the majority of calories are spent," he said. He likens it to picking a programming language. It matters, but it does not decide the project. A crowded new market Ode is not alone in the bet. OpenAI has its own version, The Deployment Company, and consulting giants Deloitte and Accenture have built rival teams. Even Microsoft keeps warning that AI only pays off when it reshapes how a business runs. The demand is real, and so is the friction. Firms are wary after episodes like HubSpot's customer-data revolt, and few can measure whether their AI actually works, a gap others are also racing to close. Ode's wager is that a small band of expensive engineers can win where the pilots failed.