Hg and Anthropic Back New Company to Move European Businesses From AI Pilots to Production

In a statement dated 3 November, Hg said the company will be independent and will formally launch later in 2026. It has not been named, and Hg did not disclose how much it or Anthropic is putting in, what stakes they will hold or who will lead the business.

According to Hg, the venture will help companies get from AI pilot projects to measurable results in their operations, including building products that are AI-native from the start. It will work on Anthropic's Claude models and rely on forward deployed engineers, the model in which technical staff sit inside a client's organisation rather than advising from outside. Hg said the company has been designed for Europe's mix of languages and regulation.

Hg's co-chief executives, Steve Batchelor and JB Brian, said the move "builds on Hg's early conviction in the transformational power of AI." Steve Corfield, Anthropic's head of global business development and partnerships, said: "Businesses are looking for experienced teams to help them put Claude to work."

How The Deal Took Shape

The announcement confirms plans the Financial Times first reported on 23 October, citing people familiar with the matter. According to that reporting, as summarised by PYMNTS, the consultancy would have hubs in London and Berlin and open by the end of 2026. Neither company commented at the time, and Monday's statement does not name office locations.

The two firms already have a working relationship. In September Hg said it was extending its collaboration with Anthropic to bring agentic AI to the roughly 60 businesses in its portfolio. Hg says it manages more than $110 billion in assets, and that its portfolio companies have a combined enterprise value of more than $195 billion. Among them is Litera, the legal software provider, which is one reason the venture has drawn attention in the legal technology press.

A Pattern Among AI Labs

The venture is the latest attempt by a frontier AI developer to capture more of the services work that sits between a model and a working business process. In May Anthropic announced a separate enterprise AI services company with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs. OpenAI has built a comparable arrangement with private equity backers, PYMNTS reported, committing up to $1.5 billion to a venture to sell its tools to businesses, with TPG, Bain Capital, Advent International and Brookfield among the investors.

These structures put the AI labs in direct competition with large systems integrators and consulting firms for implementation budgets. For Anthropic, which is preparing a Nasdaq listing, they also offer a route to steady enterprise demand for its models. For a buyout firm such as Hg, a dedicated deployment team gives its portfolio companies, many of them business software vendors facing pressure from AI, a direct line to the technology.

For European executives, the main question is practical. Many companies have run AI pilots that never reached production, and the new firm is pitching itself at exactly that gap. Details on pricing, staffing and which clients it will serve outside Hg's portfolio have not yet been released.