AI + ML
OpenAI can't have incompetent AI consultants ruining the market, so bought its own
By which we mean it bought someone else's with other people's money
OpenAI can’t have inexperienced consultants derailing the AI hype train, so it’s launching a consultancy of its own to help enterprises find the value in its models necessary to justify the spending, revenue that Sam Altman's company desperately needs to cover its infrastructure costs.
To support the endeavor, OpenAI has agreed to acquire UK-based AI consulting firm Tomoro. The terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.
Tomoro will form the backbone of the OpenAI Deployment Company, which will operate as a standalone business unit tasked with helping enterprises find the value that they've been missing from the AI flag bearer's models.
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But don’t worry, McKinsey. OpenAI’s new Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) are only there to make sure you don’t sour enterprises on AI by dragging them down an expensive rabbit hole that fails to deliver value.
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The new company is backed by the usual assortment of AI-crazed venture capitalists and private equity firms, but several consultancies, including Capgemini, Bain, and yep, McKinsey, have agreed to plow billions into the venture.
OpenAI says that its AI consultancy will launch with more than $4 billion of investments.
Presumably, these consultancies will call in OpenAI’s FDEs when they need help proving AI can boost productivity and/or cut payroll.
According to OpenAI, a typical enterprise engagement will look a bit like this: OpenAI’s FDEs will launch a diagnostic to determine where AI can create the most value, then carry out a select set of PoCs.
If successful, the FDEs will then design, build, and deploy production systems that tie into enterprises' existing customer data and tools.
The experience gained from these integrations will no doubt be used to improve OpenAI’s models and services.
The acquisition of Tomoro would bring approximately 150 FDEs and deployment specialists into OpenAI’s new consultancy unit. The deal is expected to close in the coming months, subject to regulatory approvals.
Whether enterprises should hitch their saddle to OpenAI’s success at a time when inference providers and model devs are already jacking prices in an effort to get their infrastructure costs under control is another matter entirely.
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As we reported last week, with the launch of GPT-5.5, OpenAI once again increased its API pricing. For one million tokens, GPT-5.5 is priced at $5 (input), $0.50 (cached input), and $30 (output), double that of its predecessor. But don’t worry, OpenAI says the model might be more frugal about how it uses those tokens. ®