Anthropic-Backed Ode Acquires Casper Studios to Accelerate Enterprise AI Deployments

The CODEW Tech M&A Watch | August 21, 2026

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Ode, the enterprise AI transformation company backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and a consortium of global investors, has acquired Casper Studios, an AI services firm specializing in embedding Anthropic’s Claude models into existing enterprise systems.

The deal, announced Thursday, marks Ode’s first acquisition since its formal launch in July 2026. It combines Ode’s custom AI engineering capabilities with Casper’s expertise in building skills, connectors, and context within Anthropic products to drive organization-wide AI impact.

Casper Studios is a four-year-old AI services consultancy that helps companies build applications on top of AI models and is a Select Services Partner in Anthropic’s Claude Partner Network. The Anthropic-backed startup helps companies deploy Claude inside the tools and workflows their teams already use. Ode, valued at roughly $1.5 billion at launch, focuses on moving enterprises from AI experimentation to company-wide transformation through custom-engineered solutions for complex challenges. The acquisition expands Ode’s ability to address the “long tail” of high-impact AI opportunities that sit alongside clients’ largest initiatives.

“CEOs have a long tail of AI engineering needs, and require a partner who can help them fully realize what frontier AI can do to accelerate their business,” said Chris Taylor, CEO of Ode with Anthropic. “After collaborating with Jay’s team on multiple engagements, we recognized a shared DNA and a commitment to overdelivering for the client. We’re thrilled to have them under the Ode umbrella.”

Jay Singh, CEO and co-founder of Casper Studios, added: “We built our company to help organizations adopt AI quickly, effectively, and in a way that establishes real trust. We found common cause with Ode. We know we’ll be able to do even more for our clients working with their excellent and deeply technical team.”

The two firms have already collaborated successfully. A recent shared client, Sphera (an operational intelligence platform focused on risk, safety, and sustainability), saw Ode develop a custom internal tool using Anthropic models that cut bottlenecks from time-intensive operational tasks by 70%. Concurrently, Casper automated cumbersome processes across Sphera’s customer support, consulting, and project planning teams. Both built solutions in the same Claude Code environment, allowing tools developed by one team to be instantly usable by the other.

Rodney Zemmel, an Ode board member and Global Head of the Blackstone Operating Team, highlighted the complementary strengths: “We’ve watched these two teams work together in action, embedding AI across the full arc of an enterprise, at the agent level, the product level, and well beyond. Very few firms can take a company from one hard custom build to AI running throughout the business, and that is exactly what this combination does.”

Ode was formed through a partnership between Anthropic and private equity firms including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman, with additional investors such as Goldman Sachs, General Atlantic, Leonard Green & Partners, Apollo Global Management, GIC, and Sequoia Capital. It is built on the foundation of Fractional AI, an applied AI services firm acquired in May 2026, and is led by Taylor as CEO and Eddie Siegel as CTO. The company operates with a “Claude-first” approach while remaining flexible on model selection when needed.

Terms of the Casper Studios acquisition were not disclosed. The move underscores growing demand for specialized implementation partners as enterprises seek to scale generative AI beyond pilots into production systems.