OpenAI is pushing deeper into enterprise adoption, now courting private equity firms.

On Monday, a Reuters report revealed that OpenAI is in talks with private equity firms TPG, Bain, Brookfield, and Advent to form a joint venture with a pre-money valuation of $10 billion, citing people close to the matter.

Shortly after the news broke, Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI, confirmed the news, saying OpenAI is “excited to be building a deployment arm and will share more details soon.” The benefits for OpenAI include capturing more enterprise clients, typically a sector in which OpenAI has lagged behind competitors.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Simo said that OpenAI was reducing its "side quests" and experimental projects and dedicating more resources to coding and working with enterprise businesses.

In her X post, Simo said the new deployment arm has been in the works since December and focuses on embedding engineers directly within enterprise clients to enable closer collaboration. The Reuters report provided more information on how the deal would operate, including:

• The private equity investors commit $4 billion in return for equity stakes, a say in how OpenAI’s solutions are deployed across its portfolio companies, board seats and early access to OpenAI’s enterprise tools.
• TPG would commit the most capital, serving as the anchor investor, while Advent, Bain, and Brookfield would be co-founding investors.
• The firms would get an equity stake of approximately $1 billion, though the source told Reuters the numbers and plan details were subject to change.

“This is essentially part of running a sales motion. It will help them [OpenAI] sell more of their services/tokens,” said Eric Compton, director of equity research, technology at Morningstar.

Beyond the benefits listed in the deals, private equity firms also have strategic reasons to participate.

“They are 100% motivated to 'not fall behind' and risk not having successful exits for their assets, so having a direct seat at the table in this process will help further that goal in their eyes,” added Compton.

Simo highlighted the urgency and demand for AI solutions among enterprises, noting that nearly 1 million businesses are running on OpenAI products, with API usage jumping 20% in the week after GPT-5.4 launched. Furthermore, she said, Frontier, the platform OpenAI launched last month to help enterprises manage AI coworkers, is having more demand than the company can handle.

Our Deeper View

Portfolios of private equity firms at the scale of the ones above typically hold hundreds of companies each, all of which rely on the firms for decision-making, including software investments. Targeting these firms is therefore a sound strategic move for AI companies, as it guarantees the deployment of their technology across many companies, and OpenAI is not the only one doing so. Last week, The Information reported Anthropic is in talks with Blackstone and other private equity firms to form a similar deal. The timelines and favorable terms of these deals could shake up which companies lead in the enterprise space.