Anthropic's annualized revenue soars to $19 billion, plans to partner with Blackstone to establish an AI consulting firm

Anthropic is accelerating its commercialization expansion, with business scale and strategic layout progressing simultaneously.

According to The Information, Anthropic is in talks with private equity firms led by Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman to jointly establish a joint venture focused on artificial intelligence, which will sell Claude technology and consulting services to portfolio companies under these investment firms.

Meanwhile, Anthropic’s annualized revenue has surpassed $19 billion, nearly doubling from $9 billion at the end of last year, and the revenue gap with OpenAI is rapidly narrowing.

The negotiations were briefly stalled due to recent disputes between Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Some Blackstone executives are cautious about publicly announcing an alliance with Anthropic during the Pentagon controversy—Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman is a major Republican donor and has close ties to Trump. However, sources say the negotiations are still ongoing, and an agreement is expected to be reached.

Annual revenue surges, commercialization accelerates

Anthropic’s business growth is strong, driven mainly by its programming tool Claude Code and workplace automation product Cowork, which have attracted widespread attention in the enterprise market in recent months. Its annualized revenue jumped from $9 billion at the end of last year to $19 billion, a significant increase, allowing this relatively young AI company to rapidly catch up with the long-established OpenAI in revenue scale.

Although Anthropic stated in court documents that conflicts with DOD could negatively impact its business, the controversy has also brought it considerable global attention, with many consumers and enterprises that previously knew little about it now focusing on the company for the first time. Currently, Anthropic has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the relevant decision by the DOD.

Following Palantir’s model, building a private equity ecosystem

Sources say the negotiations have been ongoing for several months. Initially, Blackstone mainly explored applying Anthropic’s AI within its portfolio companies; recently, both sides and other private equity firms have discussed establishing an independent joint venture dedicated to this business. Before engaging with Anthropic, Blackstone had also negotiated similar arrangements with OpenAI.

The proposed joint venture will adopt a model similar to Palantir, providing AI integration consulting services to help enterprises implement Anthropic’s technology. This approach is highly similar to OpenAI’s strategy—OpenAI is actively recruiting technical consulting teams to customize AI applications and automation processes for large enterprises. The specific investment scale of the joint venture has not yet been disclosed.

Blackstone owns over 250 portfolio companies, including project management software Smartsheet and dating app Bumble. Private equity firms generally face cost-cutting pressures and are keen to leverage AI to improve employee efficiency and reduce labor costs. Notably, Blackstone has previously invested in Anthropic, holding about $1 billion in equity, with the company’s overall valuation around $380 billion; Blackstone is also an investor in OpenAI.

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