According to a new agreement the two businesses announced on Wednesday, PricewaterhouseCoopers will take the lead as OpenAI's first reseller and biggest client for its enterprise offering.
PwC said that it would distribute ChatGPT Enterprise, the version of the chatbot designed for big businesses, to its 75,000 workers in the United States and 26,000 in the United Kingdom, for a total of more than 100,000 licenses for the AI product.
According to a new agreement the two businesses announced on Wednesday, PricewaterhouseCoopers will take the lead as OpenAI's first reseller and biggest client for its enterprise offering.
PwC said that it would roll out ChatGPT Enterprise, the version of the artificial intelligence software designed for big enterprises, to its 75,000 workers in the United States and its 26,000 employees in the United Kingdom, for a total of over 100,000 licenses.
The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed by either company.
The massive accountancy and consulting firm said last year that it will be investing $1 billion over the course of three years in ChatGPT's generative AI technology. According to Joe Atkinson, vice chair and chief products and technology officer of PwC U.S., the agreement announced on Wednesday is a progression of that. According to a PwC representative, the OpenAI deal represents a component of the original $1 billion investment.
According to Atkinson, PwC has spent the last year concentrating on training its employees in AI, developing its own AI tools and offering them to customers, and using AI to modernize its operations and consulting technology platform.
As businesses look for assistance in using the new technology, consulting firms are among the early beneficiaries of the generative AI boom. In order to increase their client work with generative AI, Accenture, KPMG, and Ernst & Young have also made billion-dollar investments in the technology.
"I anticipate that billion dollars will increase throughout our network as this develops further," Atkinson said.
However, generative AI isn't used in every industry. With assistance from suppliers or consultants, the majority of businesses are using it carefully, starting with applications like email summarization and automated customer support before building their own models.
According to market research and consulting company Gartner, businesses globally are anticipated to spend $1.52 trillion on information technology services this year, growing 9.7% from 2023, mostly due to preparing for generative AI. Businesses have started spending more IT dollars on consulting than internal personnel for the first time, according to Gartner, as they are lagging behind IT service providers in luring talent in fields like artificial intelligence.
Before providing customers with first-hand knowledge gained from the technology, PwC views ChatGPT Enterprise as a means to test and use it internally.
According to PwC, over 360,000 hours have been spent on generative AI activities and learning by 95% of its U.S. personnel to far. "This is not so much a search bar as it is an assistant that you have at your disposal," Atkinson said.
Additionally, PwC created ChatPwC, a chatbot that over 100,000 workers use worldwide that is based on OpenAI's GPT-4 model. It said that workers who use ChatPwC and similar products have reported a 20% to 40% improvement in productivity. According to Atkinson, staff will have access to both ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatPwC, however many will begin utilizing ChatGPT Enterprise as it becomes accessible.
Working with PwC is one of OpenAI's first attempts to market its technology to businesses with a partner other than Microsoft, which is its biggest supporter.
OpenAI has increased its enterprise sales since ChatGPT was made available to the public in 2022. Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap characterized this as a "increasing focus on enterprise for us, given the demand that we see."
OpenAI refers to its ChatGPT Team and Enterprise as their "business products." ChatGPT Enterprise is charged according to the quantity of users and is intended for businesses with over 100 workers. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT Team is intended for businesses with less than 100 workers and costs $30 per user each month.
600,000 people pay for OpenAI's ChatGPT business solutions, and 92% of Fortune 500 firms use ChatGPT in some capacity, the company announced in April. The San Francisco-based business claimed to have 200 employees total, including technical and sales personnel, to assist in directly pitching its AI technology to businesses.
"PwC has a longer history and, evidently, a wider reach, so there's a true partnership in their ability to assist us in evaluating and entering the market," Lightcap said.
Lightcap noted that the firm reacted to comments from businesses wanting for models that can process photos and video in addition to text while training GPT-4o, OpenAI's newest model that can converse with people via voice and more effectively interpret images and video. Tuesday, OpenAI announced the creation of a safety and security committee after the company's involvement in a legal dispute around GPT-4o, its new voice assistant.
Although OpenAI has previously collaborated with consulting companies like Bain, the business claims that its relationship with PwC is the first of its type since it includes a reseller component and a committed investment. According to Lightcap, OpenAI will probably collaborate with additional partners, but for the time being, it is concentrating on using PwC's corporate knowledge and working with it to create AI solutions tailored to certain sectors.
According to Atkinson, PwC has seen that industries that strongly depend on customer service, including financial services and healthcare, have adopted AI at the fastest rate so far. PwC reported that 950 of its top 1,000 U.S. consulting customers are "actively engaged" in generative AI.
In addition, PwC collaborates with other digital companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others that have their own generative AI tools and platforms. According to Atkinson, the company would give customers "objective advice" about the best usage of AI products.
Atkinson said that PwC aims to save customers "from any of the challenges or scars that we might have" by carrying out the internal rollout of ChatGPT.
OpenAI and News Corp, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, have a content license agreement.
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