On the human side, Blackstone is betting that the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not models

AI models are more capable than ever, but exactly what enterprise adoption will look like remains a big question. In an effort to shape this future, labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are doing just that Weave separate works Dedicated to deploying AI engineers into its clients’ offices — a bet that helping companies figure out how to use their AI models is the next trillion-dollar category.

One of those companies now has a name: Ode with Anthropic is the $1.5 billion AI implementation company that the AI ​​Lab launched in May as part of a joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others. The move comes on the heels of OpenAI’s own position on the matter, The Deployment Company, underscoring a growing recognition among frontier AI labs that winning enterprise customers require much more than simply shipping better models.

Ode was originally designed by Blackstone, which noticed a gap when it tapped large consulting firms and boutique AI services shops to implement AI across its portfolio companies. One such company, AI engineering services startup Fractional AI, appears to have emerged, and the joint venture acquired the startup shortly after it was announced. (Fractional ended an 11-month partnership with OpenAI when it was acquired.)

Fractional became the foundation for what is now known as Ode – a kind of “boutique” AI services company. Its leaders have ambitious goals.

“It’s very easy to imagine this company being worth a trillion dollars one day if we execute well,” Chris Taylor, CEO of Ode and co-founder of Fractional, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. “The main challenge for the business is how do you get through this phase of hypergrowth without losing focus on quality?”

Ode currently employs 100 engineers, and works closely with Anthropic’s applied AI team to identify where technology can have an impact on different businesses, and create systems tailored to each organization’s operations.

Anthropic’s internal team will continue to focus on strategic, mission-aligned deployments, an Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch. The private equity firms backing Ode will direct their portfolio companies to the joint venture as potential clients, although Ode will not limit the sales of its services to those companies.

For Ode, the ideal client is one whose CEO delivers on the promise, according to Taylor.

“A lot of the work we do is one or two of the CEO’s top priorities,” Taylor said. “It’s the most important product feature that a company is going to build over the next two years, or it’s reworking its most important business process.”

Ode will operate under the “Claude-first” principle, meaning it will implement Anthropic technology, including features such as Claude Tag in SlackWhenever possible. However, the company is not limited to Anthropic’s technology, and will use competing AI products if necessary.

The secret sauce of the project is the quality of implementation and the ability to build custom solutions to business problems, says Eddie Siegel, chief technologist at Ode and co-founder of Fractional.

“I think form choice is important, but that’s not where the majority of calories are spent,” Siegel said. “It’s a component of the system that has to be engineered. It’s like choosing a programming language when creating a piece of software (…) I wouldn’t define an enterprise shift in terms of whether they choose Python or Java.”

Taylor added that the founding belief behind Ode is that “non-AI companies will be among the big winners of the entire AI moment if they embrace the technology in the right way.” He added that using artificial intelligence, “this magical, hallucinogenic element,” and reconnecting core business processes or customer experiences with it requires a lot of help.

“It requires high-level applied AI talent, which most companies don’t have,” Taylor said.

Ode executives describe their team as elite, dedicated software engineers, more than half of whom are former founders — the kind of people who can “tackle a really hard technical problem, but also have something all-encompassing,” according to Siegel. Or as one Blackstone executive put it: a team of “mature” engineers, “special forces” rather than an army of forward-deployed engineers (FDEs).

As several people involved in the project told TechCrunch, demand for these FDE teams far exceeds supply. Ode’s goal is to continue expanding, also internationally, while maintaining a small company status – in other words, to conduct ongoing assessments to measure the business impact of AI applications.

But in a world where truly outstanding engineering talent is scarce, maintaining and growing such a team is a real challenge. If becoming an elite applied AI engineer requires experience as an entrepreneur, systems-first thinking, AI skills, and enterprise product judgment, will Ode be able to train enough people to meet the demand?

Compounding these difficulties is the fact that Ode will be competing not only with OpenAI’s The Deployment Company, but also with consulting giants like Deloitte and Accenturewhich established its own FDE teams.

Siegel isn’t too concerned about the dwindling number of adult professional engineers.

“It’s never been easier to become an entrepreneur,” he said. “You learn a lot by trying to approach problems holistically, trying to make product market fit, and move the needle in the business. You learn a lot there, and you don’t learn it from just solving a narrow problem. That’s the skill set that fits well with Ode.”

Whether enough of these engineers will emerge remains an open question. But if Audi and its backers are right, the next great AI race won’t just be about the best models, but about who can successfully run those models inside the world’s biggest companies.