OpenAI has acquired Edinburgh-based Tomoro AI to scale its newly announced deployment firm with an initial investment of $4 billion.

The AI firm is launching OpenAI Deployment Company, a new firm designed to help organisations build and deploy AI systems.

The new firm has been created to help extend OpenAI’s ability to embed specialist AI engineerings into organisations working on complex AI deployments in demanding environments.

The acquisition of Tomoro AI will see about 150 experienced deployment engineers and specialists into the new OpenAI Deployment Company.

The new firm is a partnership between OpenAI and 19 other organisations led by TPG, with Advent, Bain Capital, and Brookfield as co-lead founding partners, and B Capital, BBVA, Emergence Capital, Goanna, Goldman Sachs, SoftBank Corp., Warburg Pincus, and WCAS as founding partners.

Investors also include leading consulting and systems integration firms, including Bain & Company, Capgemini, and McKinsey & Company.

The new firm, which OpenAI will maintain majority ownership and control over, is part of OpenAI’s continued campaign to bring its consumer market success into enterprise deployment as it competes with Anthropic’s Claude which has seen recent success in business adoption.

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The acquisition of Tomoro, which was founded in 2023 in Edinburgh, sees OpenAI inserting itself down the supply chain from its foundation model origins to business AI deployment aid.

“Our belief hasn’t changed, but the scale of the mission has. At The Deployment Company, we’re going to build that future and amplify the change we’re already creating for our customers,” Tomoro wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the firm’s acquisition.