Post by Brickwork GTM

Two announcements changed the PE/AI landscape this week.   Anthropic raised a $1.5B joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs. OpenAI’s 'Deployment Company' raised $4B at a $10B pre-money valuation across a 20-firm investor roster including TPG, Brookfield, Bain, and Advent.   Combined, they’re built to serve roughly 2,000 portfolio companies.   There are 13,500+ PE-backed companies in North America.   The math on who’s left out isn't complicated, and it’s not going to fix itself. The FDE engagement model that makes these JVs work at scale simply cannot scale to the middle market without breaking the JV's own unit economics.   We’ve been working inside middle market portcos for years, and we’ve mapped out exactly what that gap looks like, why it’s structural rather than temporary, and what a right-sized program actually requires.   Three specific inversions of the mega-fund model. A two-quarter action plan for sponsors ready to move.   The window to build a data moat here is 6-12 months. Check out our full POV – and interested to hear from others tracking this.   #PrivateEquity #MiddleMarket #AI #PortfolioOperations #EBITDA