OpenAI Launches Partnerships With Thrive and Accenture

OpenAI is teaming with Thrive Holdings, an investment vehicle created by longtime investor Thrive Capital, to boost enterprise artificial intelligence adoption.

Their initial focus will be on accounting and IT services, where OpenAI’s platform can drive immediate benefits, according to a Monday (Dec. 1) announcement.

“AI is redefining how enterprises are built and deliver value for customers,” OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap said in the announcement. “This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what’s possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers.”

The collaboration will see OpenAI embed research, product and engineering teams within Thrive Holdings’ companies “to boost speed, accuracy and cost efficiency while strengthening service quality” and “establish a repeatable model that can expand across other industries,” the announcement said.

“Historically, technology transformed industries from the outside in,” Thrive CEO and founder Joshua Kushner said in the announcement. “We believe this paradigm shift will happen from the inside out as domain experts and practitioners use AI as a native tool to reshape their fields. The businesses we acquire represent the right reward systems for this evolution, bringing together industry expertise and real-world data that can help improve models on specific tasks and capabilities.”

The partnership is the latest in a series of OpenAI deals that have drawn criticism for their circular aspect. For example, Nvidia has said it would invest up to $100 billion to help fund OpenAI’s data centers, while OpenAI agreed to purchase millions of Nvidia chips to power those centers.

Also Monday, OpenAI announced separately a partnership with professional services company Accenture that will see Accenture equip tens of thousands of its professionals with ChatGPT Enterprise.

“By embedding OpenAI technology and practices in Accenture’s consulting, operations and delivery work, Accenture will apply its learnings and experiences to helping clients scale their own adoption,” the second announcement said.

The announcements come as OpenAI’s ChatGPT marks its third year in existence. While the company has projected its chatbot will have more than 220 million paid users by 2030, PYMNTS wrote Monday that the “big story” three years on is the scale of generative AI.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that 90% of CFOs saw very positive ROI from adopting generative AI, up from 27% in March 2024.

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