Accenture is equipping tens of thousands of its IT professionals with ChatGPT Enterprise under a sweeping new partnership with OpenAI, a move that immediately lifted Accenture’s shares by more than 2.8% in premarket trading and signaled a deeper shift in how major consulting firms are restructuring their service models around AI.
Both companies said on Monday that they will also launch a new AI program that helps enterprises across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and retail adopt AI-powered workflows. The goal is to embed generative AI throughout business operations at a moment when corporate clients are demanding faster, more automated systems.
Accenture’s decision is unfolding against a backdrop of uncertain government spending and an uneven global economy. The firm is simultaneously navigating an $865 million restructuring announced in September, designed to realign its workforce, lower costs, and lift efficiency.
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Inside the industry, the rise of advanced AI tools has stirred fears of job displacement because these systems can process and generate information far faster than traditional consulting workflows. Still, Accenture is placing itself in a position to win enterprise business by integrating AI more aggressively into its operations.
As part of the agreement, Accenture’s teams will use ChatGPT Enterprise for both internal and external work, with the partnership expected to accelerate AI upskilling across roles — not only engineers but also analysts, consultants, and client-facing teams. The expanded use of ChatGPT Enterprise is part of a broader trend of companies seeking to automate tasks, reduce project timelines, and boost productivity.
OpenAI’s growing investment tentacles
The announcement also comes at a moment when OpenAI is rapidly widening its investment tent. While the company is still battling the difficulty of turning ChatGPT into a consistently profitable product, it has been diversifying — taking ownership stakes in companies positioned to benefit from AI.
One of the clearest examples is its recent deal with Thrive Holdings, the portfolio company launched by major OpenAI backer Thrive Capital. OpenAI will embed engineering, research, and product teams inside Thrive Holdings’ businesses to accelerate AI adoption and lower costs. Thrive Holdings, which buys, owns, and operates companies in real-economy sectors such as accounting and IT services, said the goal is to pair its operational footprint with OpenAI’s frontier models.
Joshua Kushner, CEO and founder of Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings, described the partnership as an effort to bring “tremendous potential” to sectors overdue for modernization.
OpenAI has also taken positions in infrastructure partners essential to its long-term growth, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and CoreWeave — both of which provide critical compute capacity for large-scale model training. These stakes are structured to grow if the partner companies’ performance improves, effectively giving OpenAI a financial mechanism to offset the massive computing costs behind its models.
The Thrive Holdings partnership also doubles as compensation for OpenAI. People familiar with the deal said OpenAI’s stake grows if Thrive’s portfolio companies do well, turning AI deployment into a revenue-linked investment rather than a one-off service sale.
A broader industry pivot
Taken together, Accenture’s deployment and OpenAI’s investment strategy show how deeply AI is reshaping the consulting and enterprise-software world. As companies race to modernize internal workflows, the integration of ChatGPT Enterprise inside one of the world’s biggest consulting firms signals an acceleration of that shift.
Accenture is betting that its AI-first restructuring will help it win new enterprise contracts. And OpenAI, facing the enormous cost of running its models, is steadily weaving itself into the foundations of the corporate economy — not only through software but also through equity stakes that grow in value when AI transformation succeeds.
Both companies are positioning themselves for an era where AI-driven operational change is no longer optional, and the race is moving from experimentation to full-scale deployment.