OpenAI is recruiting hundreds of new employees to expand its technical consulting team, according to a source familiar with the company's plans. This team primarily assists large enterprises in developing customized AI applications and intelligent agents to automate employee tasks.
This hiring initiative will help OpenAI compete with its main rival, Anthropic, which is also aggressively expanding into the enterprise services market. Concurrently, OpenAI is preparing to launch a new enterprise-grade product designed to streamline the implementation of AI applications within companies.
The ChatGPT developer is bolstering its team of technical advisors, also known as pre-deployment engineers. These engineers can customize OpenAI models using clients' proprietary data—for example, helping T-Mobile develop an AI customer service system or assisting Intuit in providing tax filing services for users.
Currently, among OpenAI's approximately 4,000 employees, about 60 serve as such technical advisors, with an additional 200-plus employees belonging to the closely related technical customer success team.
Palantir pioneered this model of pre-deployment engineers, achieving rapid growth by helping clients overhaul backend systems and implement AI applications.
Strengthening its enterprise service capabilities will help OpenAI gain investor confidence for a potential future initial public offering (IPO). Company executives have held informal discussions with investment banks and law firms, targeting an IPO as early as the fourth quarter of 2026.
According to a summer forecast by OpenAI, the company aims to increase the proportion of revenue from business clients from about 40% in January to 50% by year-end, corresponding to a projected revenue of approximately $15 billion by 2026. In contrast, Anthropic projected in December of last year that its revenue would reach $18 billion by the end of this year, with the vast majority coming from selling access to its AI models to developers and enterprises.
A source providing IPO advisory services to multiple investment banks stated that Anthropic is expected to complete its IPO by the end of this year or early next year.
For years, OpenAI has employed technical staff to help companies implement AI applications, and last year, the company significantly increased hiring for such specialized engineers.
Recently, OpenAI also engaged in discussions with Amazon regarding a unique commercial collaboration: OpenAI researchers and engineers would develop tailored AI solutions for Amazon products like Alexa. Earlier this week, OpenAI signed a multi-year, $200 million agreement with Snowflake to integrate OpenAI's AI models into Snowflake's application-building services and equip Snowflake employees with the commercial version of ChatGPT.
OpenAI has also announced deepened partnerships with major consulting firms such as Accenture, Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, and technology consultancy Slalom. Leveraging these firms' expertise, OpenAI can develop high-value AI applications for large enterprise clients.
Similar to OpenAI, Anthropic serves corporate clients through what it terms applied AI engineers. The company stated it has partnered with consultancies like Cognizant, Accenture, and Deloitte to help businesses implement AI applications, while also collaborating with cloud service providers like Amazon to offer technical support—such as providing on-site assistance for employees of automotive software firm Cox Automotive.
OpenAI has already signed long-term agreements with seven clients worth at least $100 million annually, with six additional clients engaged in partnerships valued at no less than $75 million, potentially scaling to $100 million or more.
These collaborations typically include three core components: providing ChatGPT subscription services for employees, enabling access to AI models via application programming interfaces (APIs), and assisting companies in developing applications or AI agents.
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