Billion-Dollar Partnerships Land in the AI Arena
This week, Anthropic and OpenAI back-to-back announced new joint ventures focused on enterprise AI services.
Anthropic said it is teaming up with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs to launch a new company that will help mid-sized businesses integrate Claude into their operations. Anthropic’s own staff will work alongside the new company’s employees to build tailored solutions for enterprises.
OpenAI is working on a similar play with a venture called The Development Company. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has already pulled in over $4 billion in commitments from firms like TPG, Brookfield, Advent, and Bain Capital.
The industry has been talking for a while about the need for engineering and consulting muscle to actually adapt AI to companies’ own data and workflows. Still, it’s interesting to watch the same labs that pitch AI as a path to smaller teams and more automation now spinning up multi-billion-dollar consulting and services armies just to get their tech used. Both Anthropic and OpenAI seem to have decided that great models and vertical integrations alone aren’t going to cut it, and are rolling up their sleeves themselves.
Coinbase Hits Pause With Mass Layoffs
Coinbase announced it is laying off about 14% of the company. The reason given is CEO Brian Armstrong’s push to make Coinbase an “AI – native” organization. The announcement also mentioned an organizational restructuring, flattening the company’s hierarchy into a leaner, five-level structure.
Looking at the numbers, Coinbase’s headcount grew about 30% in 2025 compared to the year before. So chalking these layoffs up purely to AI is probably the easy answer. It’s just as likely that, after a fast-growth phase that bloated the team, the company is now feeling the standard market and cost pressures that follow.
The timing is also worth noting: the announcement landed right before Coinbase’s Q1 earnings on May 7, where revenue is expected to decline. Moves like this signal “we’re getting costs under control.” As you’d expect, on May 5, the day of the announcement, the stock saw a small bump.
Yes, companies are once again calling this an “AI transformation,” but it really looks like the bill for fast growth is being handed to employees, again.
X/Brian Armstrong → | Reuters →
OpenAI Goes Self-Serve on Ads
While the rest of us are busy debating the ethical and UX problems of putting ads inside AI chatbots that people use to learn things, make decisions, or just get work done faster, OpenAI is quietly building its ad business.
The company unveiled a beta of its new self-serve Ads Manager, where advertisers can run their own campaigns on a CPC (cost per click) basis. The announcement stresses that ads will be clearly labeled and separated from ChatGPT’s answers, and that user conversations and personal details won’t be shared with advertisers.
Meta Adds Robots to Its AI Bet
Meta, which has been doubling down on AI investments lately, has reportedly acquired humanoid robotics startup Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI). The ARI team is set to join Meta’s AI org.
The move suggests the company that shut down its Metaverse push and pivoted to AI and robotics is no longer trying to drag the physical world into the digital one. Instead, Meta now seems focused on building an AI layer that can actually operate in the physical world.
