Anthropic and British private equity powerhouse Hg are teaming up to launch a standalone consultancy that will place AI specialists directly inside European companies, The Financial Times reported Friday, citing anonymous sources.
The yet-unnamed venture, expected to begin operations before January, plans to open offices in London and Berlin. Neither firm responded to requests for comment.
The move signals a broader race among AI developers to capture enterprise customers by offering hands-on implementation support, not just software licenses. Anthropic already operates a similar venture with Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman, launched in May to embed its Claude model across corporate clients.
Hg extended its existing Anthropic partnership in September, committing to bring agentic AI capabilities throughout its portfolio. The two organizations had collaborated for three years prior on hackathons and internal upskilling programs.
“Hg backed the shift toward agentic AI early,” co-CEOs Steve Batchelor and JB Brian said at the time. “We want our portfolio companies to have a direct line to the frontier.”
Demand for implementation talent has exploded. Forward-deployed engineer job postings jumped more than 800% between January and September 2025, reflecting how aggressively companies now prioritize AI integration.
Meanwhile, rival OpenAI pledged up to $1.5 billion in April toward a private equity venture of its own, aiming to outpace Anthropic in the enterprise AI market. TPG, Bain Capital, Advent International, Brookfield, and Goanna Capital committed an additional $4 billion to that effort.
The European consultancy launch comes as AI providers increasingly compete on service depth rather than model benchmarks alone. Embedding engineers and consultants directly within client operations has emerged as the latest differentiator in a rapidly consolidating market.
