If you are a channel partner who's been wondering whether that AI gold rush everyone's talking about is finally becoming a realistic channel opportunity, recent news from OpenAI and Anthropic seems to point to yes. Both companies have officially launched their formal partner ecosystems and that's a significant shift for two of the biggest names in the AI market. Let's back up. OpenAI recently launched its first ever Open AI partner network that it's backing with a $150 million investment.
Now, the company says that it wants to see its partners build, sell, and deliver AI solutions based on its various technologies. And it's creating a three tier familiar program to do so, complete with enablement, co-ell opportunities, technical resources, and certifications. OpenAI has also said it's aiming to train hundreds of thousands of certified consultants by the end of 2027, which sounds like a huge number and is a huge number, but when you think about the market share that OpenAI promises to hold by then, perhaps is unsurprising.
Now, at the same time, Anthropic is expanding its clog partner network. We've talked about that before on channelinsider.com and here on this channel. It's got new services tracks and partner hubs that are designed to help customers find qualified entropic partners to work with on their deployments. The company plans to reward its partners based on again certifications, deployments, and demonstrated expertise in delivering clog powered solutions.
Anthropic itself has already committed $und00 million to support that ecosystem through, you guessed it, enablement, training, technical support, and go to market programs. But what does this all actually mean for channel partners? Well, there's a couple things we're keeping our eyes on. First, AI vendors are increasingly coming around to the idea that enterprise customers don't just need their models. They need implementation, integration, governance, security, change management, and ongoing support.
Now, all of those are the bread and butter for MSPs, integrators, resellers, consultancies, and various other channel partners. So expect to see more AI companies come around to fully working with the channel in ways that the channel is more familiar with. Second, we're seeing the emergence of a new call it a certification economy around generative AI, agentic AI and other AI enabled solutions. Now, if you've been around, you remember the cloud certification wave.
And they also became a major differentiator among partner types over the past decade as technicians and partners decided who they wanted to work with and what they wanted to get technical expertise in as they developed their cloud practices. Open AI and Anthropic are now creating credentials that fit partners demonstrate their expertise and win their business in a very similar manner. And third, this signals that AI is actually maturing into a channel-led market, not just a channelaware market.
The biggest opportunity for large vendors in the AI space moving forward may not actually be in developing the models themselves anymore. It may actually become more in helping customers at the enterprise, mid-market, and SMB actually deploy those models responsibly, securely, and in ways that really actually drive business outcomes. As more and more business leaders look at things like ROI and consider the cost implications of deploying AI across their stack, they're going to turn to partners to understand what, where, when, how, and why ultimately these deployments still make sense.
And that's really the bottom line here, right? Open AAI and Anthropic are investing so heavily in partners because I think they know that they can't scale their AI solutions at the enterprise without those partners. For channel firms who have been on the fence or looking to start building AI practices, these programs are now two more ways to head to market with training, customer acquisition, and long-term services revenue with two of the biggest names in the space that your customers frankly probably already know a bit about. to find out more about where the AI market, the security market, and services market wrapped around all of it are headed.
And to hear straight from your peers on how they're building practices to enable customers to adopt AI and more, head to channelinsider.com. I'm Victoria Durgen.
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