OpenAI to commit up to $1.5B of its own capital to DeployCo, a joint venture with PE firms valued at $10B

The FT reports that OpenAI’s $500M initial equity stake, with an option for $1B more, will go into a Delaware LLC designed to accelerate AI adoption across PE portfolio companies. OpenAI is guaranteeing backers a 17.5% annual return. A close is expected in early May.

OpenAI is set to commit up to $1.5 billion of its own capital to a new joint venture with private equity firms, the Financial Times has reported, in the latest development in what has become a structured enterprise distribution race with rival Anthropic.

The joint venture, known internally as DeployCo, is a Delaware-registered LLC designed to speed up the adoption of OpenAI’s workplace tools across the portfolio companies of its PE investors. OpenAI will hold super-voting shares.

The venture is expected to be valued at $10 billion in a funding round set to close in early May.

OpenAI’s initial equity commitment is $500 million, with an option to add a further $1 billion at a later stage. PE firms investing in the venture include TPG, Bain Capital, Advent International, Brookfield, and Goanna Capital, are collectively committing approximately $4 billion.

DeployCo’s backers will invest for five years, with OpenAI guaranteeing them an annual return of 17.5%. The guarantee is a structural feature designed to de-risk the investment for PE firms: it functions as a floor return on preferred equity, meaning OpenAI absorbs the shortfall if the venture underperforms.

The strategic logic is distribution rather than capital. OpenAI raised $110 billion at a $730 billion pre-money valuation in February and is not raising DeployCo to fund operations.

The purpose of the joint venture is to convert the PE firms’ combined portfolio universe, hundreds of operating companies across healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and financial services, into a captive channel for OpenAI’s enterprise products, bypassing the slower deal-by-deal sales cycle.

TPG alone controls stakes in companies employing hundreds of thousands of people. A JV relationship converts the PE firms from passive observers into active distribution partners who have a financial incentive to push OpenAI products into their portfolios.

The 17.5% guaranteed return is the most revealing detail in the deal. OpenAI is projecting a loss of approximately $14 billion in 2026 even as it approaches $30 billion in annualised revenue. Guaranteeing a 17.5% floor on $4 billion of PE capital represents up to $700 million in annual guaranteed exposure if the JV underperforms.

That is a significant financial commitment for a company still losing money at scale, and it signals how urgently OpenAI views the enterprise market. Anthropic is pursuing a parallel joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Permira at a smaller scale, approximately $1 billion, and without a guaranteed return floor, according to prior reporting by Reuters and The Information.