OpenAI in Talks with Private Equity Firms to Form $10 Bn Joint Venture

OpenAI is in advanced discussions with private equity firms, including TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital and Brookfield Asset Management, to establish a joint venture to distribute its enterprise AI products, Reuters reported. OpenAI’s head of applications, Fidji Simo, confirmed the development in a post on X.

The proposed venture is being discussed at a pre-money valuation of about $10 billion. The firms are expected to collectively commit around $4 billion in exchange for equity stakes and governance rights, including board representation. TPG is likely to act as the anchor investor, with the others participating as co-founding partners. The structure and terms are not final and could change.

The joint venture is designed to accelerate the adoption of OpenAI’s enterprise offerings across the portfolio companies owned by these private equity firms and to expand distribution beyond them. It would also give the investors early access to OpenAI’s tools and influence over deployment strategies.

OpenAI’s enterprise business has reached an annualised revenue of about $10 billion, bringing total annualised revenue to approximately $25 billion, according to the Reuters report.

The proposed venture could also support the distribution of OpenAI’s enterprise platform, Frontier, launched recently to help companies deploy AI systems within business processes. The platform is part of a broader initiative that includes partnerships with consulting firms such as BCG, McKinsey, Accenture and Capgemini.

In a post on X, Simo said the company is building a dedicated deployment arm to meet rising enterprise demand. “Companies have a ton of urgency to deploy AI… and we’re sprinting to meet that demand,” she said, adding that more than one million businesses are using OpenAI’s products.

Simo said Codex has crossed two million weekly active users, nearly quadrupling since the start of the year, while API usage rose 20% following the launch of GPT-5.4. She added that Frontier, the company’s enterprise platform launched last month, is seeing demand beyond current capacity.

OpenAI is planning a shift in strategy to focus more on coding and business users, moving away from a broader approach that tried to do too many things at once, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Simo shared the plans during an internal all-hands meeting. She said senior leaders, including CEO Sam Altman and Chief Research Officer Mark Chen, are reviewing which areas to cut back. Employees are expected to be informed about the changes in the coming weeks, the report said.

“We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests,” Simo told staff last week, according to remarks reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front.”