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What is the story about?
Indian IT companies are witnessing a sharp sell-off on Tuesday, May 12, after OpenAI's latest launch of OpenAI Deployment Company, which has led to shares of TCS, Infosys, and HCLTech falling to multi-year lows.
This follows Anthropic's own move just seven days earlier — on May 4th — when it launched a similar AI-native enterprise services firm, backed by Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, General Atlantic, GIC, and Sequoia Capital.
Two reasons. First is access.
OpenAI and Anthropic's PE partners collectively sponsor thousands of portfolio companies. The question the industry is asking: can a PE firm mandate an OpenAI-first or Claude-first deployment across its entire portfolio — bypassing the traditional IT vendor entirely?
Perhaps the request for proposals will become a formality.
Second is contextual knowledge.
Indian IT's moat was always its deep, long-standing client relationships. McKinsey and Bain now sit inside DeployCo — and they will design the AI-native workflow and own the strategy layer.
CNBC-TV18 has spoken to Indian IT companies multiple times, about the impact of AI and its risk and the answer is always the same.
"We are needed. We understand a client's messy legacy infrastructure. We will use the AI models drive outcomes and own the risk. (own the risk is important – who takes responsibility when something goes wrong)
But take OpenAI as an example — using the Tomoro acquisition and accompanied 150 engineers, AI engineers ar eembeeded directly inside client organisations, they can identify opportunities, redesign workflows, and ship production systems at scale using Agentic AI.
The fear is that OpenAI and Anthropic will capture the strategy and design layer of the project, potentially leaving Indian IT with the execution or lower-margin "run the business" kind of work.
But then you might ask that Indian IT companies themselves have these partnerships. Infosys has partnered with both OpenAI and Anthropic, integrating Codex into its Topaz AI platform and building Claude-powered agents. The view of analysts is that just as every company has both direct channel sales and partnership sales, that dynamic will likely play out between Indian IT and these LLM giants too.
Also Read: Explained - What is causing the steep sell-off in IT stocks on Tuesday
This follows Anthropic's own move just seven days earlier — on May 4th — when it launched a similar AI-native enterprise services firm, backed by Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, General Atlantic, GIC, and Sequoia Capital.
Why Does This Matter To Indian IT?
Two reasons. First is access.
OpenAI and Anthropic's PE partners collectively sponsor thousands of portfolio companies. The question the industry is asking: can a PE firm mandate an OpenAI-first or Claude-first deployment across its entire portfolio — bypassing the traditional IT vendor entirely?
Perhaps the request for proposals will become a formality.
Second is contextual knowledge.
Indian IT's moat was always its deep, long-standing client relationships. McKinsey and Bain now sit inside DeployCo — and they will design the AI-native workflow and own the strategy layer.
IT Companies On The Road Ahead
CNBC-TV18 has spoken to Indian IT companies multiple times, about the impact of AI and its risk and the answer is always the same.
"We are needed. We understand a client's messy legacy infrastructure. We will use the AI models drive outcomes and own the risk. (own the risk is important – who takes responsibility when something goes wrong)
But take OpenAI as an example — using the Tomoro acquisition and accompanied 150 engineers, AI engineers ar eembeeded directly inside client organisations, they can identify opportunities, redesign workflows, and ship production systems at scale using Agentic AI.
The Street Fear
The fear is that OpenAI and Anthropic will capture the strategy and design layer of the project, potentially leaving Indian IT with the execution or lower-margin "run the business" kind of work.
But then you might ask that Indian IT companies themselves have these partnerships. Infosys has partnered with both OpenAI and Anthropic, integrating Codex into its Topaz AI platform and building Claude-powered agents. The view of analysts is that just as every company has both direct channel sales and partnership sales, that dynamic will likely play out between Indian IT and these LLM giants too.
Also Read: Explained - What is causing the steep sell-off in IT stocks on Tuesday
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