Frenemies, forward-deployed

"This time it's different" are the four most expensive words in enterprise tech.

Author

Malcolm Frank, CEO
May 11, 2026

Frenemies, forward-deployed

This past week, Anthropic and OpenAI aggressively jumped into IT services, announcing a combined $11.5 billion in new services ventures alongside a slew of bulge-bracket private equity backers.

You could almost see the thought bubble over the C-suites at Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, Cognizant, and Infosys: With partners like these, who needs enemies?

It echoes a move Oracle made a generation ago at a strikingly similar inflection point. Frustrated by how slowly its services partners were solving the last-mile problem with enterprise buyers, the firm launched Oracle Consulting and recruited services pros like Ray Lane and Robert Shaw to drive the effort. It ended in tears.

The mechanics were elegantly self-defeating. When clients evaluated ERP systems, they didn't call vendors. They called their consultancy. Recommending Oracle now meant inviting Oracle Consulting to bid against you on the implementation. As such, pushing SAP became a no-brainer. Oracle’s then-CFO Jeff Henley later confessed: "We screwed up partnering by building this big consulting group. We totally pissed off our partners."

But maybe this time is different, because the AI labs aren't attempting to replicate the existing services model; they're looking to transform it by weaponizing Palantir's forward-deployed playbook to seize the execution layer itself. 

Execution is the new high ground, because it’s where work actually gets done. The old question of "what software should our people use?" has given way to a sharper one: "who, or what, should do this task?" That question is the new top of the stack, the work layer, where every company now decides what goes to a person, a model, an agent, or some hybrid of the three. Whoever owns it may own the next decade of enterprise value.

Then again, "this time it’s different" are the four most expensive words in enterprise tech.

So which is it: coopetition or the end of the traditional IT services model? And if it’s the former, the biggest winner from this may be Google Gemini: already enterprise-mature, and (so far) wise enough not to compete with its channel.

Either way, it was a fascinating week. 

Competing with the channel: Anthropic and OpenAI are both launching joint ventures for enterprise AI services

In a direct challenge to legacy firms like Accenture and Deloitte, OpenAI’s “DeployCo” and Anthropic’s $1.5 billion consortium aim to monetize the last mile of AI integration across hundreds of portfolio companies.

Alphabet’s 160% rally in a year reflects value of owning “most of the stack” in AI

By owning everything from custom TPU chips and massive subsea cables to the Gemini models themselves, Alphabet has engineered a 160% stock surge that proves the highest margins in AI belong to those who control the entire stack.

Missed Sequoia’s AI Ascent 2026 event?  Watch it here 

Leading minds from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind convene at Sequoia’s annual summit to map a future defined by the “commoditization of intelligence” and the rise of self-improving AI agents.

Anthropic says it hit a $30 billion revenue run rate after “crazy” 80x growth

The “Software 3.0” era arrives: CEO Dario Amodei admits that 80x growth has pushed the company’s compute capacity to the brink, forcing a pivot toward massive infrastructure deals to keep up with “unhandleable” demand.

Why “AI-powered” thinking will leave your company behind

AI success comes from redesigning processes from scratch rather than automating old habits. 

[Webinar] Govern AI or Be Governed By It: What Every Board Director Needs to Know Now

A board-level briefing with the Corporate Board Member network on managing AI risk, oversight, and competitive impact with confidence.

When: Tuesday, 19 May, 11:00 - 12:00 (CST)

What You’ll Learn

  • How to govern AI in the enterprise without falling into risk, misuse, or legal blind spots

  • What proactive, effective AI oversight looks like and why fear-based approaches fail

  • How to track AI-driven market shifts, competitor moves, and valuation impact at the board level

Anthropic rolls out financial services agents as arms race with OpenAI heats up

By launching 10 “ready-to-run” agents for tasks like pitchbook creation and KYC screening, Anthropic is moving beyond chatbots to provide Wall Street with autonomous digital analysts that live directly inside Excel and PowerPoint.

Point: Companies name AI as top reason for job cuts for second straight month

While the White House pledges to lead the global AI race, labor experts fear a rollback of Biden-era guardrails will leave workers vulnerable to rapid, unchecked displacement.

Counterpoint: The “AI job apocalypse” is a complete fantasy

Bad economics meets worse history: why a16z believes the narrative of AI-driven mass unemployment is a failure of imagination that ignores how productivity actually creates jobs.

Research: Why you shouldn’t treat AI agents like employees

The “AI Employee” is a management myth: Why anthropomorphizing agentic systems lowers trust, confuses roles, and fails to actually improve workforce productivity.

So you’ve heard these AI terms and nodded along; let’s fix that

From “agentic workflows” to “stochastic parrots,” our comprehensive field guide cuts through the Silicon Valley jargon to help you navigate the high-stakes language of the AI era.

Startup wants to run AI inference from space

Orbital comes out of stealth with plans of thousands of small number-crunching satellites.

AI in the sky: Inside the FAA plan to overhaul air traffic

The agency’s new push isn’t focused on “safety critical functions,” according to a company involved in the effort.

I knew my writing students were using AI. Their confessions led to a powerful teaching moment

The problem wasn’t just the perfectly polished, yet mediocre prose. It’s what’s lost when we surrender the struggle to translate thought into words.

And one more thing…

The rise of “Stacey face”: How AI is warping our beauty standards

From TikTok filters to hyper-realistic generative models, experts warn that the homogenization of beauty into a singular, AI-perfected “Stacey face” is fueling a new crisis of self-image and digital dysmorphia.

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