OpenAI lures private equity firms with guaranteed returns in race against Anthropic

OpenAI is offering private equity firms a guaranteed minimum return of 17.5 percent to win them over for joint ventures in the enterprise market. Moreover, participating firms would get early access to new OpenAI models. Reuters broke the story, citing people familiar with the matter. The investment amounts involved are reportedly larger than usual.

The goal is to get private equity firms—investment companies that buy and resell entire businesses—to rapidly roll out OpenAI's AI tools across hundreds of companies in their portfolios. Big names like TPG, Advent, Blackstone, and Permira are reportedly in the mix.

Anthropic is pursuing a similar distribution strategy, but allegedly without offering a comparable return guarantee. That could change now that OpenAI has raised the stakes. The already thin margins of AI companies compared to SaaS peers are likely to take an even bigger hit from these kinds of commitments.

The entire effort appears aimed squarely at Anthropic, which has been gaining ground with enterprise customers recently and currently leads in coding with Claude Code. OpenAI recently announced a renewed focus on the coding business with Codex and a consolidation of its products into a single super app.