Isobar and Blackstone Bet: The next trillion-level AI track will be implemented, not just large models
The capabilities of large AI models continue to be iteratively upgraded, but how companies implement AI is still a big problem. In order to seize this future market, AI laboratories such as Anthropic and OpenAI have established independent business units and specially dispatched AI engineering teams to customer companies to provide implementation services. They judge that helping enterprises deploy AI models will create the next trillion-level track. One of the on-site service companies has been officially named: Ode with Anthropic. This AI implementation service provider with a valuation of US$1.5 billion was jointly established by Isobar in May this year. , Herman Friedman, and other institutions established a joint venture to build. Previously, OpenAI also launched a similar entity, The Deployment Company. This trend fully demonstrates that cutting-edge AI laboratories have reached a consensus: if they want to win corporate customers, it is not enough to launch stronger and larger models. The idea for Ode originally came from Blackstone. When Blackstone had previously implemented AI projects for a number of its portfolio companies, it had cooperated with large consulting companies and small AI boutique service providers. During the process, it was discovered that there was an obvious supply gap in the market. One of the AI engineering startups, Fractional AI, performed particularly well. The joint venture acquired the company soon after it was officially announced (before the acquisition, Fractional had just ended its 11-month cooperation with OpenAI). Fractional AI has become the core foundation of Ode, creating a large-scale high-quality AI service team. The company's management has set ambitious development goals. Chris Taylor, CEO of Ode and co-founder of Fractional, said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch: "If we operate in place, this company has every opportunity to grow into a trillion-dollar market capitalization company in the future. The biggest problem in this business is how to achieve rapid expansion without reducing service quality." Ode currently has 100 engineers who collaborate deeply with Isobar’s applied AI team to explore application scenarios of AI technology in different industries and customize systems for each company to adapt to its own business processes. An Isobar spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company’s internal team will still focus on strategic AI implementation projects that match its core mission. Private equity firms that invest in Ode will deliver their respective invested companies as potential customers, but Ode's business will not be limited to these companies. Taylor said Ode's Customers are companies whose CEOs fully recognize the value of AI. "Most of the projects we undertake are one or two core strategic tasks for the CEO of the company, either the development of the most important product features in the next two years, or the reconstruction of the company's core business processes." Ode implements the principle of giving priority to the use of Claude and implements Isobar technology as much as possible, including functions such as Slack's built-in Claude tag; however, it is not limited to using Isobar products, and will also connect to competing AI tools when necessary. Eddie Siegel, chief technology officer of Ode and co-founder of Fractional, said that the core competitiveness of this joint venture lies in the quality of delivery and the ability to customize solutions for various business pain points. "Model selection is important, but it is not the link that consumes the most energy. It is just one component of the entire engineering system, such as the choice of programming language during software development... The success or failure of an enterprise's digital transformation will never depend on whether to choose Python or Java." Taylor added that the core original intention of founding Ode was: "As long as AI is implemented in the right way, non-tech companies will become one of the biggest winners in this AI wave." However, if companies want to use AI, a "tool with hallucination-generating properties," to reconstruct core business processes and reshape customer experience, companies need a lot of external professional support. “The vast majority of companies lack top applied AI talent,” Taylor said.
Ode management defines the team as top all-round software engineers, and more than half of the members have entrepreneurial experience. Siegel said that this type of talent can not only overcome difficult technical problems, but also be independently responsible for the entire project process. A Blackstone executive described the team as a "special force" composed of mature and senior engineers, rather than an ordinary team composed of large numbers of expatriate engineers. Several people involved in the joint venture told TechCrunch that the market’s demand for outsourced AI engineering teams has far exceeded supply. Ode plans to continue to expand domestically and overseas while maintaining its positioning as a boutique service provider - that is, it will continue to quantitatively evaluate the actual business value that the implementation of AI brings to enterprises. However, top engineering talents are currently scarce, and building and continuously expanding such high-end teams is a real problem. Top applied AI engineers need to have entrepreneurial experience, systems thinking, AI technology skills and corporate product judgment. It is still unknown whether Ode can train enough talents in batches to match market demand. In addition, Ode also has to face multiple competitions: competitors include not only OpenAI’s landing service companies, but also Deloitte, These companies, such as large consulting giants, have established their own outsourced AI engineering teams. Siegel isn't worried about the shortage of senior general-purpose engineers. "Today, the threshold for starting a business has never been lower. Completely managing projects, polishing product-market fit, and promoting business growth can allow people to learn a lot of experience that cannot be obtained by just solving a single technical problem. This set of capabilities is exactly suitable for Ode's business needs." Whether such high-end engineers can continue to emerge remains to be seen. But if the judgment of Ode and its investors holds true, the core competition in the next round of AI track will no longer be about the performance of large models, but about who can truly implement AI technology into the business systems of large global enterprises.
Ode management defines the team as top all-round software engineers, and more than half of the members have entrepreneurial experience. Siegel said that this type of talent can not only overcome difficult technical problems, but also be independently responsible for the entire project process. A Blackstone executive described the team as a "special force" composed of mature and senior engineers, rather than an ordinary team composed of large numbers of expatriate engineers. Several people involved in the joint venture told TechCrunch that the market’s demand for outsourced AI engineering teams has far exceeded supply. Ode plans to continue to expand domestically and overseas while maintaining its positioning as a boutique service provider - that is, it will continue to quantitatively evaluate the actual business value that the implementation of AI brings to enterprises. However, top engineering talents are currently scarce, and building and continuously expanding such high-end teams is a real problem. Top applied AI engineers need to have entrepreneurial experience, systems thinking, AI technology skills and corporate product judgment. It is still unknown whether Ode can train enough talents in batches to match market demand. In addition, Ode also has to face multiple competitions: competitors include not only OpenAI’s landing service companies, but also Deloitte, These companies, such as large consulting giants, have established their own outsourced AI engineering teams. Siegel isn't worried about the shortage of senior general-purpose engineers. "Today, the threshold for starting a business has never been lower. Completely managing projects, polishing product-market fit, and promoting business growth can allow people to learn a lot of experience that cannot be obtained by just solving a single technical problem. This set of capabilities is exactly suitable for Ode's business needs." Whether such high-end engineers can continue to emerge remains to be seen. But if the judgment of Ode and its investors holds true, the core competition in the next round of AI track will no longer be about the performance of large models, but about who can truly implement AI technology into the business systems of large global enterprises.