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.