AI unicorn startup Anthropic, known for taking on OpenAI’s ChatGPT with its Claude 2 large language model (LLM) assistant, is moving to take its offerings to more enterprises. 

Today, the Dario Amodei-led company announced it has partnered with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to provide its clients with “direct access” to Claude 2 and Anthropic’s AI tech.

The engagement will see BCG clients use the AI models across different strategic solutions, ideally driving innovation and improving the productivity of their respective teams.

It’s the latest in a series of team-ups between giant global consulting firms (BCG is among the “Big Three” management consultancies in the world by some measures) and AI tech providers.

It is another big win for Anthropic‘s bid to remain competitive in the white-hot enterprise AI space, coming on the heels of the $100 million investment and work agreement to build AI for South Korean telecom giant SKT announced last month.

How exactly will Anthropic help BCG clients?

While Anthropic will provide the technology, BCG will advise the clients on its strategic applications and help them integrate the models for business results.

BCG hasn’t publicly shared specific applications for Anthropic’s AI, but has confirmed that the integration will be used for synthesizing long-form documents and research, including supporting market research and customer insight synthesis. 

It emphasized Anthropic’s “constitutional” approach to safe AI — in which AI models and applications are bound to specific moral and ethical frameworks determined by their human creators — noting that Claude has been designed to be “helpful, honest, and harmless.”

Other areas of application will be accelerating fraud detection, demand forecasting and writing-related tasks. This includes drafting test scripts and specifications in enterprise resource planning transformations or supporting HR with writing job specifications and finance with report generation. BCG said it will run pilots for enterprises interested in deploying the models.

Bottom-lining the impact of AI on enterprises

“The large enterprises I talk with are focused on harnessing value and bottom-line impact from AI, and doing that in the most effective and ethical way possible,” Sylvain Duranton, global leader of BCG X, BCG’s tech build and design unit, said in a press release. “Aligning these two aspects of AI is a challenge and the price for getting it wrong can be immense, both financially and in reputational harm. Our new collaboration with Anthropic will help deliver that alignment on ethics and effective GenAI.”

Even prior to their partnership being announced today, BCG had used Anthropic’s models for its own internal systems.

Plus, the companies also recently co-hosted a workshop at the United Nations on how to leverage the opportunities of generative AI while managing the risks at the same time.

“Enterprise leaders today want to tap into AI’s transformative potential while managing risks responsibly. BCG is a leader in guiding enterprise companies through technological change and an active advocate for safe AI deployment. We look forward to supporting their clients as they build and innovate with Claude,” Neerav Kingsland, head of strategic partnerships at Anthropic, said in the statement. 

Deployment of AI growing via leading providers

While the partnership with BCG marks a growth step for Anthropic, which is valued at an estimated $5 billion, it is not the only AI company pushing its offering through industry partnerships — and driving the adoption of AI across functions. 

Back in February, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the highest-funded player in the space, announced a partnership to combine its AI tools and platforms, including ChatGPT, with Bain & Company’s digital implementation capabilities and strategic expertise to help the latter’s clients around the world identify and implement the value of AI.

Similar partnerships have also been forged between Cohere and McKinsey as well as between PwC and OpenAI. 

Most recently, EY made headlines with the launch of EY.ai, a platform that brings together a complete AI ecosystem with capabilities to boost clients’ adoption of AI.

As these efforts continue, access to AI will be democratized, while driving the business of the AI vendors and providers ahead. According to estimates from McKinsey, with generative AI’s implementation, retail and consumer packaged goods companies alone could see an additional $400 billion to $660 billion in operating profits annually. Across sectors, it has the potential to generate $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in global corporate profits.