The Morning Download: Anthropic Bulks Up Its Enterprise Partner Program Amid IPO Plans

Good morning. In the race to sell cutting-edge technology to business customers, AI model makers are deploying a number of tried-and-true tactics, from striking deals with consulting and professional-services firms to building a workforce of forward-deployed engineers. 

On Wednesday, days after announcing that it filed confidentially for an IPO, Anthropic formalized its own Claude Partner Network—a program for third-party sellers of its AI products and, as the WSJ Leadership Institute's Belle Lin notes, another traditional tactic for selling IT to businesses.

The Claude Partner Network represents Anthropic’s effort to build a “channel business”—essentially a network of third-party resellers that help a company’s own sales team move product. It’s a proven strategy that tech giants from Microsoft to Cisco have deployed to dramatically expand the reach of their own sales teams.

For Anthropic, the move also helps “demonstrate to the market that we’re thinking about scale, and that should give confidence,” said Steve Corfield, its head of global business development and partnerships.

About the network. The program is currently launching with about 100 members, including large professional-services firms like Accenture and Cognizant. To gain entry, firms must meet a slate of requirements, among them certifying a minimum number of people in a proctored exam, the company said.

A new “services track” for the network delineates how much effort a partner has put toward its Anthropic business. A “select” partner, for instance, employs at least 10 Anthropic-certified individuals, whereas a “global premier” partner has at least 1,000.

The company also released a portal that helps partners track their standing and connects customers with partner firms.

• Microsoft unveiled several AI models at its Build event Tuesday including its first advanced reasoning model and a coding model tuned for its GitHub developer platform, CNBC reports. Separately, AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, in an interview with Semafor, said the company's AI efforts are catching up to where leaders were earlier this year: “We’re now neck and neck with essentially what was state of the art just a few months ago,” he said.

• President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday asking AI companies to give the administration access to powerful models 30 days before public release. The order also asks national security and cyber officials to work with agencies and top tech companies to address software vulnerabilities identified by models like Anthropic’s Mythos. Some see the order as a win for those who pushed for more oversight, but critics say it still falls short in policing potentially dangerous AI systems.

• Software-development tool maker GitLab is cutting 350 full-time employees, about 14% of its total workforce, as part of a restructuring, WSJ reports. “We are evolving GitLab to be the trusted enterprise platform for software creation in the AI era,” Chief Executive Bill Staples said.

• Anthropic said it will expand its Project Glasswing initiative using its Mythos AI model to find and patch vulnerabilities to 150 organizations worldwide, FT reports. Those organizations include include NATO, the member countries of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, payments platform Swift, Okta and Samsung Electronics. 

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes Marvell Technology, which specializes in data infrastructure semiconductors and high-speed networking technology, could be the next chip firm to join the trillion-dollar club. Speaking at a trade show in Taipei Tuesday, Huang said that the industry needs advanced connectivity to tie together increasingly disaggregated and distributed computing systems. “That’s the reason why Marvell is so essential,” he said.

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Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to the WSJ Leadership Institute's new Executive Resilience series, where she's profiling America's top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

Follow Belle Lin on LinkedIn and X for her latest reporting on enterprise technology and AI.

Steven Rosenbush is chief of the enterprise technology bureau at the WSJ Leadership Institute. He also has a column. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Tom Loftus is the editor of The Morning Download. He suggests following Isabelle, Belle and Steve on their various social channels. But if you insist, here's his LinkedIn.