Private equity firms have reportedly begun placing artificial intelligence experts within their portfolio companies to grow those businesses.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to a report<\/a> Friday (Aug. 21) from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which cites the example of Wall Street firms like Blackstone<\/a> and Hellman & Friedman\u2019s<\/a> $1.5 billion partnership with Anthropic<\/a> to form an approximately 160-person team of AI experts.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we liked was this was a senior engineering team,\u201d said Rodney Zemmel<\/a>, who heads Blackstone\u2019s operating team. \u201cIt\u2019s not like a bunch of kids who just learned AI.\u201d<\/p>\n The plan is to offer the services of the joint venture<\/a>, a stand-alone company known as Ode, well beyond the world of private-equity-owned businesses. Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Anthropic have each pledged to invest around $300 million to the effort.<\/p>\n OpenAI<\/a> has launched a rival venture that would offer consulting services<\/a> to companies, with a $4 billion investment headed by private-equity firm TPG<\/a>.<\/p>\n As WSJ noted, these efforts are happening as business leaders scrutinize AI spending. While white-collar anxiety about the technology has jumped, executives have begun walking back predictions<\/a> that AI will trigger sweeping job cuts.<\/p>\n Private-equity executives said Ode will help establish new product lines to boost revenue, and that cost savings aren\u2019t the main focus of their work.<\/p>\n Blackstone plans to bring the effort to 25 of its more than 270 portfolio companies, with engineers from Ode already operating at six of these businesses.<\/p>\n Among these companies is the Chamberlain Group<\/a>, a maker of garage-door openers that Blackstone purchased in 2021 that has begun turning to AI experts to expand software features like ones that inform homeowners if packages have arrived.<\/p>\n Ode\u2019s customer pipeline, including companies that aren\u2019t private-equity-backed, is \u201cimmense and growing by the day,\u201d said Chris Taylor, the group\u2019s chief executive.<\/p>\n In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the increasing use of AI shopping tools<\/a>, a trend demonstrated by recent corporate earnings.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile still small in total today, as more consumers begin to explore the benefits<\/a> of agentic shopping, Target\u2019s digital traffic sourced from external AI platforms is growing,\u201d Target CEO Michael Fiddelke<\/a> said during an earnings call last week.<\/p>\n Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows consumers are already comfortable using AI as a shortcut to researching purchases, with 38% of AI users<\/a> saying they used the technology to compare prices across retailers, and 36% using it to find deals.<\/p>\n \u201cWillingness extends further than research alone,\u201d the report added, as additional PYMNTS Intelligence research found that 49% of consumers<\/a> interested in agentic AI \u201cwould let an assistant complete both routine and larger, research-driven purchases on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n