OpenAI is dangling a 17.5% guaranteed minimum return in front of private equity firms, according to a Reuters exclusive published Sunday. The deal, which also includes early access to OpenAI's newest models, is designed to lure buyout firms like TPG and Advent International into joint ventures that would funnel AI tools into hundreds of portfolio companies at once. Anthropic is running the same playbook with its own set of PE partners, but without the guaranteed return.
Why buyout firms?
The logic is distribution. Firms like TPG, Bain Capital, Advent, and Brookfield collectively own or control hundreds of operating companies across healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and retail. A joint venture converts that entire portfolio into a captive sales channel, skipping the painful one-deal-at-a-time enterprise sales cycle that eats margins and burns quarters.
OpenAI is reportedly seeking about $4 billion from PE investors at a pre-money valuation of roughly $10 billion for the venture, per earlier Bloomberg reporting. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been talking to Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Permira for its own enterprise-focused venture, though its deal is reportedly closer to $1 billion in PE equity and comes with no return guarantee.
The motivation is obvious if you look at recent Ramp data reported by Axios: Anthropic now captures 73% of spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time. That figure was 50% just ten weeks ago, when OpenAI was tied. The shift has been fast enough that OpenAI's head of apps, Fidji Simo, reportedly called it a "code red" internally.
The 17.5% problem
A guaranteed 17.5% annual return is an unusual instrument for a company that has not demonstrated stable profitability. If the joint venture underperforms that threshold, OpenAI has to make up the difference, compressing margins that are already thin compared to traditional SaaS businesses. And this comes on top of the high upfront costs of deploying engineers to customize models for enterprise clients.
"There's a big race to lock in as much enterprise, as many desks as possible," said Matt Kropp at BCG's AI unit, which is a polite way of saying both companies are spending aggressively to create switching costs before anyone has proven the unit economics work. Once a customized AI model is embedded in a company's workflows, ripping it out becomes expensive. That stickiness is the whole bet.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing IPOs as early as this year. Clean segment reporting from a neatly structured joint venture looks better in an S-1 than a sprawl of one-off enterprise deals with messy revenue recognition. The PE partnerships are as much about IPO optics as they are about distribution.
Not everyone is buying it
Thoma Bravo, one of the largest software-focused buyout firms in the world, decided not to participate in either venture. Managing partner Orlando Bravo questioned the long-term profit profile, noting that many of his portfolio companies are already deploying AI tools without needing a joint venture structure to access them. At least one other PE firm reached the same conclusion.
That skepticism gets at a real tension in the pitch. PE firms can already buy OpenAI and Anthropic products as customers. The joint venture asks them to commit capital on top of that, and the upside for anyone who is not a lead partner (with board seats and meaningful equity) is unclear. Some PE investors told Reuters the partnerships reflect pressure from their own LPs to show a visible AI strategy, not genuine conviction that the economics make sense.
Anthropic's deal may shift in response. Reuters reported the company could adjust its terms now that OpenAI has raised the stakes with a guaranteed floor. Whether Anthropic matches the offer or holds its position likely depends on how badly it needs the distribution versus how much financial flexibility it wants to preserve before its own potential listing. Anthropic raised $30 billion in its Series G last month at a $380 billion valuation, so capital is not exactly scarce.
No final agreements have been announced. Whether TPG or any other firm formally commits, and on what terms, will determine if this enterprise distribution thesis moves from pitch deck to executed deals.
