OpenAI Launches ‘Deployment Company’ – Will It Impact Legal Tech?

OpenAI – the LLM pioneer that had it all, but has more recently squandered some of its lead – is now going all-in on driving enterprise uptake of its AI capabilities with the launch of its own consultancy-based ‘OpenAI Deployment Company’. Will this impact legal tech?

First, what is happening? OpenAI has agreed to acquire the Tomoro consulting firm and will build out an army of Forward Deployed Engineers, or FDEs. It’s also put together an incredible coalition of investors and other major consulting groups, which will both fund and take part in the initiative.

Big names include: Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs, SoftBank, Warburg Pincus, Capgemini, and McKinsey & Company.

The goal is simple: get large organisations to use OpenAI’s technology – to really engage directly with their LLMs on serious commercial challenges and to then scale that use across their businesses. That in turn will generate new revenue for OpenAI as it prepares to go to IPO. It also means using their AI first and foremost, and not necessarily intermediated by other SaaS products.

This is also a bit of a departure from recent strategies that have felt more ‘retail’ in focus, such as adding advertising to ChatGPT. In short, it all feels a lot more ‘serious’.

The move comes as it seems that main rival Anthropic has stolen a march on OpenAI when it comes to enterprise engagement. And readers will of course be well aware of how Anthropic has taken strides into the legal domain.

OpenAI said this about their new consulting move: ‘OpenAI Deployment Company, [is] a new company designed to help organisations build and deploy AI systems they can rely on every day across their most important work. Successful AI deployment is about empowering people and teams to do more.’

In short, the AI empire is no longer going to build itself. It’s going to need people to actually go out and visit offices and talk to other people and help them bring all of this lovely AI stuff into their business – and help them gain real value from it.

The days of hoping ‘Big Business’ will just magically absorb AI and make it work for them at scale are over.

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Impact on Legal Tech?

As noted, when it comes to the legal world, Anthropic has taken the lead here with Claude for Word – illustrated with legal examples; a legal plug-in; and a webinar about how to use Claude for legal seen by over 20,000 people; plus multiple deep relationships with legal tech companies, as well as an all-in deal with Freshfields. And there is far more to come…!

OpenAI has not said anything in this announcement about the legal world. But with a market worth $1 trillion and where the largest global corporations can have a legal spend in the $100s millions, it would be strange if they paid no attention at all to it. They are an investor in Harvey as well – so they know all about legal opportunities, even if they’ve not gone after the field as Anthropic has.

And clearly this kind of very human help could have an impact in the legal domain. As they explained:

‘A typical OpenAI Deployment Company engagement will begin with a focused diagnostic of where AI can create the most value, followed by a small number of priority workflows selected with the customer’s leadership and operating teams. The OpenAI Deployment Company FDEs will then work inside the organization to design, build, test, and deploy production systems, connecting OpenAI models to the customer’s data, tools, controls, and business processes so teams can use them reliably in day-to-day work.’

Does this sound like what about two dozen far smaller legal tech consultancies already offer? You bet it does.

So, enterprise legal – and perhaps the largest law firms – are potential targets, and they are already primed given how many ‘legal AI consultants’ serve this sector already. Plus, with Freshfields doing an ‘all-in’ deal with Anthropic, why not have another firm, or inhouse team, do an ‘all-in’ deal with OpenAI?

The question then is: will they go after the legal sector?

As said, Anthropic is clearly going after the legal field. OpenAI watches what Anthropic does – after all, Dario and team started at OpenAI with Sam Altman.

If they did seriously target inhouse and law firms, would the potential buyers leap at it? It’s possible. Once upon a time, OpenAI ruled the LLM waves, it could win back its top spot among business users if it can prove value via its FDE strategy. Pricing may be a key factor, so too the level of support on offer and how that is charged for.

That in turn could put additional pressure on some legal tech tools that didn’t have a large moat, although, AL would say that they’d need to develop more of a specific legal offering – as Anthropic is doing – to really win hearts and minds.

But, never say never….

AI is moving very quickly now. Leaders fall back, new leaders emerge, then they in turn fall back and the previous leaders could re-take the lead. New ideas pop into Altman’s head every other week. We are still in the very early stages of AI – and of this new era of legal AI.

More about the new OpenAI plans here.

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