Procurement's playbook just broke

Anthropic and OpenAI both launched consulting-backed implementation arms last week. OpenAI’s new entity, The Deployment Company, raised more than $4 billion; Anthropic’s $1.5 billion firm is being built with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs. Both embed their own engineers — OpenAI calls them Forward Deployed Engineers — directly inside the customer’s office. The implementation team is now the model team. This issue gives you the three questions to ask procurement before the next vendor meeting — on independence, exit cost, and who is checking the work.