Exclusive: OpenAI deployment arm to acquire Northslope
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The OpenAI Deployment Company agreed to acquire Northslope, an applied AI firm, OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios, marking its second acquisition focused on enterprise AI use since launch.
The big picture: AI companies are starting to do work that was traditionally left to consulting firms, betting that helping customers implement AI will be as important as building the models themselves.
Catch up quick: The OpenAI Deployment Company launched in May as part of OpenAI's effort to help enterprises deploy AI in core business operations.
- Northslope is the Deployment Company's second acquisition, following AI deployment firm Tomoro.
- The deal expands the Deployment Company's bench to hundreds of "forward deployed engineers" (FDEs) who work alongside customers to build AI systems inside their organizations.
- OpenAI's deployment arm, which is majority-owned and controlled by OpenAI, kicked off with $4 billion under its belt to fund acquisitions, but the terms of this deal weren't disclosed, and it is subject to customary regulatory approvals.
Between the lines: As frontier models become increasingly comparable, it's harder to win on model performance alone. Enterprises need to know how to use the tools.
- FDEs have the benefit of speaking both tech and business languages, helping bridge the gaps between teams and employees who want to use AI models for certain tasks but may struggle to prompt solutions themselves.
- That strategy mirrors Palantir's long-standing approach of embedding engineers directly with customers to build software around their operations. (Northslope's founders come from Palantir.)
- It's not just OpenAI: Anthropic is building an AI services company to help mid-sized businesses use Claude.
What we're watching: Whether FDEs can keep enterprises adopting and scaling their AI usage amid concern about AI spend, enterprise IP and security overall.
The bottom line: The next phase of the AI race may be defined by who can get businesses to use their AI tools rather than model releases.
