Financial Times: Anthropic and Hg plan to send AI consultants to European companies

What's new

The Financial Times reported on October 23, 2026, that Anthropic, the company behind Claude, and private equity firm Hg will set up a new, independent consulting company. Its job is to help European businesses adopt AI and build their own products with it.

The plan is for the company to embed AI consultants and engineers directly with customers. Anthropic is contributing money from its own balance sheet, while Hg is investing through funds it manages, including the London-listed HgCapital Trust. According to the plan, the company will have hubs in London and Berlin and is expected to launch before the end of 2026. Ownership stakes, amounts and the company's official name have not been disclosed, and according to Hugging News, neither Anthropic nor Hg has officially confirmed the details of the deal.

What's smart

The idea is to move the experts in where the need is. Many companies have access to AI but lack people who can make it work in daily operations. According to the plan, the company will place AI consultants and engineers with its customers.

Hg is a natural partner. Anthropic and Hg have worked together since early 2024. On September 21, 2026, Hg announced that Claude-based agentic AI (AI that can carry out multiple steps of a task on its own) is being rolled out across Hg's portfolio of about 60 companies. Hg also reported more than 1,600 live AI projects with a budgeted EBITDA contribution of more than $260 million, a fivefold increase since 2024. EBITDA is, roughly speaking, operating profit before depreciation and amortization. The September collaboration, however, is internal value creation within Hg's own companies and not external consulting.

Cheaper or better?

Pricing has not been disclosed, so nothing can be said about what it costs to hire the company or whether it will be cheaper than others.

According to Streamline Feed, the initiative pits the big AI labs against consulting firms such as Accenture and the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC. The model is not new. According to Hugging News, OpenAI launched a similar Deployment Company in May 2026 with $4 billion in startup capital. Hugging News also describes the new company as the first independent one Anthropic has set up to sell AI services. Streamline Feed, however, reports that Anthropic already launched Ode with Anthropic on July 15, 2026, together with Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman, a standalone services firm with the same model. According to Hugging News, citing another source, the company is aiming for a valuation of more than $10 billion within five years. That is an ambition, not a result.

What it's good for

The company is intended for European businesses that want help getting from pilot to production with AI. The target group is described as software companies that sell to businesses and want to develop products with AI.

For ordinary users, nothing changes right now. For Danish companies, it has not been disclosed whether the offering will be available in Denmark. Only hubs in London and Berlin are mentioned, so it is a project to watch once the company is up and running.