TNB Tech Minute: Private Equity Firms Team Up With Anthropic on AI Venture Ode

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This podcast is sponsored by Comcast Business.

**Amit Verma** (0:03)
So CIO's role has evolved, and they're moving from being a technologist to being the bridge between AI capabilities and human adoption.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
That's Amit Verma, CTO at Comcast Business. He believes that continuous intelligence and operating posture linking people, applications, data, and machines is essential for AI at scale. Later, learn why it requires strong executive leadership.

**Julie Chang** (0:31)
Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Friday, August 21st. I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal. Private equity firms Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman have joined forces with Anthropic to form a roughly 160-person team of AI experts to deploy at businesses. The standalone firm will be called Ode, and the PE executives said it'll help businesses, starting with their own portfolio companies, build new revenue-generating products using AI. The $1.5 billion joint venture also includes Apollo, General Atlantic, and Goldman Sachs among its backers. OpenAI has formed a rival venture that would offer consulting services to companies, with a $4 billion investment led by private equity firm TPG.
Crypto stocks are rising as Bitcoin is headed for its best weekly performance in more than two years. Shares of Coinbase Global, the largest crypto exchange in the US., are up more than 7 percent. Robinhood Markets shares jumped nearly 13 percent. And Strategy, the Bitcoin accumulation firm, is up about 6 percent. Bitcoin recently traded above $77,000. It has been climbing since the Treasury Department expanded its bond buybacks, a move that continues to weaken the dollar. The largest cryptocurrency is still well below its previous peak above $126,000 in October. But its sudden move upward has lifted other digital currencies and crypto link stocks.
And Swedish heating company, Nibe Industrier, reported growth in sales and operating profit in the second quarter, amid strong heat pump demand in Europe and the US. Net sales jumped 8.7% on year at fixed exchange rates to $1.14 billion for the second quarter, while operating profit climbed 11%.
Additionally, sales in the element divisions grew 12%, driven by data center demand. But its CEO said a fresh round of tariffs imposed by the US announced at the beginning of the second quarter will be challenging. And that's your TMB Tech Minutes. Check back Monday for another Quick Tech Update.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:40)
Amit Verma from Comcast Business explained the key role of CIOs in building systems of continuous intelligence across the organization, which is essential for AI at scale. But responsibility is shared across the C-suite.

**Amit Verma** (2:53)
The CEO and the board owns the business risk and the resilience. It involves your CFO organization for support on the investment.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:03)
The Chief Human Resources Officer steers and shapes AI-driven workforce transformation. The Chief Information Security Officer ensures data safety and compliance. And it goes on. Cross-functional teamwork helps make way for real transformation.

**Amit Verma** (3:16)
Without that partnership and collaboration, Verma says, You are going to develop solutions that just automate a part of the process and not the end-to-end process. So it limits or reduces the impact of the automation.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:31)
Visit comcastbusiness.com/enterprise to learn how Comcast Business helps enterprises navigate an ever-changing technology landscape.