OpenAI has secured a significant deal with PwC, with the accounting and consulting giant set to become the largest customer of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise. This development comes as OpenAI intensifies its enterprise sales efforts.
What Happened: PwC will be the primary customer and the first reseller of OpenAI’s enterprise product. This follows the announcement of a new deal between the two companies on Wednesday, reported by The Wall Street Journal.
PwC will be rolling out ChatGPT Enterprise, the enterprise-focused version of ChatGPT, to its 75,000 U.S. employees and 26,000 U.K. employees. This amounts to over 100,000 licenses for the AI product. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This agreement is an extension of PwC’s previous announcement to invest $1 billion in generative AI, the technology behind ChatGPT, in its U.S. operations over three years, as per PwC’s U.S. vice chair and chief products and technology officer, Joe Atkinson.
"As this continues to evolve, I expect that billion dollars to grow across our network," Atkinson said.
PwC plans to utilize ChatGPT Enterprise internally to test and apply the technology before sharing insights with clients. To date, 95% of PwC's U.S. workforce has dedicated over 360,000 hours to generative AI activities and learning. According to Atkinson, the technology serves more as an assistant than a simple search tool.
For OpenAI, collaborating with PwC marks one of its initial ventures into selling its technologies to enterprises with a partner other than Microsoft, its primary backer.
Why It Matters: This deal is a significant milestone for OpenAI, as it marks a strategic shift towards enterprise sales, a move that has been in the works since the public release of ChatGPT in 2022. The company has been focusing on enterprise sales, given the demand it has been witnessing.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Team make up its “business products.” ChatGPT Enterprise is aimed at companies with over 100 employees, while ChatGPT Team is designed for firms with fewer than 100 employees.
This development also aligns with the broader trend of increased adoption of AI technologies in the business world. A recent PwC report highlighted the surge in productivity in AI-driven sectors, signaling an economic upswing.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 has a relative advantage over humans in financial analysis, further underlining the potential for AI technologies to revolutionize various industries.
However, the rise of OpenAI is also attracting competition. French startup Minstral AI has been gaining traction in the U.S. and is targeting OpenAI’s market, indicating a growing competitive landscape in the AI industry.
Image Via Shutterstock
This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Comments
Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.
