Private-equity giant Blackstone is embedding AI engineers inside companies it owns to help grow revenue, increase productivity and raise efficiency.
Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman have formed a roughly160-person team of AI experts with Anthropic that will work directly inside businesses, starting with their own portfolio companies, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The team is part of Ode, a new stand-alone company backed by a $1.5 billion joint venture involving Anthropic and Wall Street firms including Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Apollo, General Atlantic and Goldman Sachs.
Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Anthropic are each committing roughly $300 million to the venture. Ode eventually plans to offer its services beyond private-equity-owned companies.
OpenAI has formed a rival consulting venture backed by a $4 billion investment led by private-equity firm TPG, according to the Journal.
Ode represents an unusually hands-on approach to enterprise AI adoption. Instead of selling companies AI software and leaving their employees to figure out how to best use it, Ode engineers are being placed inside businesses to identify opportunities and build AI-powered products.
Blackstone plans to deploy the program at 25 of its more than 270 portfolio companies. Ode engineers are already embedded at six.
One of the first to use Ode is Chamberlain Group, the maker of LiftMaster garage-door openers that Blackstone acquired in 2021 at a $5 billion valuation.
For example, at Chamberlain Group, the maker of LiftMaster garage-door openers, Ode AI specialists are working alongside company engineers to develop and test software features for connected garage-door systems. Those include optional features such as recognizing designated people, notifying homeowners about package deliveries and garbage pick up. It is testing a feature that can learn a family’s routines and flag unusual activity.
Chamberlain expects its digital-doorman revenue to hit $500 million annually by 2030, according to the Journal. Before the AI initiative, the company had estimated the business would eventually top out at about $160 million.
AI is also reducing some costs. Chamberlain’s advertising campaign around Amazon Prime Day in June was 10 times cheaper than the previous year’s campaign, in part because of AI tools.