'OpenAI, Bain Expand AI Partnership To Sell ChatGPT To Businesses; The AI Company Said It Has One Million Business Customers Paying For ChatGPT, Including Bain's 13,000 Consultants' - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/openai-bain-expand-ai-partnership-to-sell-chatgpt-to-businesses-d17775dc?mod=latest_headlines

 

OpenAI and Bain & Co. are expanding their pact to sell OpenAI's tools, including ChatGPT, to clients of the Boston-based consulting firm.

The two companies first announced a selling partnership in 2023, when they began introducing OpenAI technology to businesses. In August 2024, Bain's 13,000 consultants received licenses for ChatGPT Enterprise, the version of the chatbot targeted at large companies.

At the core of the deal is a team that will build industry-specific artificial-intelligence tools for sectors including retail and life sciences, said Christophe De Vusser, worldwide managing partner and chief executive of the consulting firm. Bain is putting about 50 employees into the joint effort. OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap declined to say how many OpenAI team members will be involved.

The two companies declined to provide financial terms of the partnership.

By expanding their work together, OpenAI and Bain aim to reach industries that require more tailored solutions than an off-the-shelf version of ChatGPT. But even with custom products, selling AI tools to businesses has proven more challenging than many tech companies anticipated.

 

Businesses have moved beyond experimenting with AI, De Vusser said, adding that while it was fun to experiment, "it's not what is fundamentally going to drive a business transformation." Recognizing that shift, corporate technology leaders are now asking whether their private data is ready to use with AI, and what results they can get out of their AI investments, he said.

For retailers, Bain and OpenAI are developing solutions like AI-based shelf and space planning tools that can help with forecasting, planning and pricing of goods, De Vusser said.

In life sciences, customers such as drugmaker Amgen are working with Bain and OpenAI to automate the creation of documents, according to De Vusser.

Bain said 30% of its revenue is technology and AI related, with that number expected to reach 50% in coming years. De Vusser said Bain has worked with hundreds of clients on OpenAI technology.

For OpenAI, the pact with Bain could help it sell technology to more businesses, which have bigger AI budgets than individual consumers. OpenAI said it now has one million paying business clients, including users of ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu, its product for universities. That is up from the 600,000 paying users OpenAI said it had in April.

OpenAI said it doesn't share the number of companies that have purchased its AI products. It also sells access to its API, or application programming interface, which allows companies to integrate its technology into their products or back-end solutions. Usage of its API has doubled since July, OpenAI said.

The San Francisco-based AI startup, which is planning to convert from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit company, has a similar partnership with accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, announced in May. Earlier this month, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in new funding that values it at $157 billion—on par with the market capitalization of AT&T. 

OpenAI's annualized revenue, a projection of yearly receipts based on recent results, recently hit about $4 billion, but it is still losing billions a year.

Despite news reports about internal conflicts and executive departures at OpenAI, the company remains focused on delivering its tools wherever they can have an impact, said Lightcap, the chief operating officer.

To that end, over the last six months, OpenAI has added roughly 150 employees to the technical, sales, partnerships and support team that assists with directly selling to companies, putting that team's total at about 350 employees, the company said. OpenAI has more than 1,700 employees overall.

So far, OpenAI hasn't built its own industry-specific products, except for ChatGPT Edu, which has similar controls to ChatGPT Enterprise but the company said it is less than half the cost.

"We're a small company, relatively speaking, and we're pretty vertical agnostic," Lightcap said, with no special focus on a particular industry.