May 12, 2026

The "AI evangelist" exponent

Rebecca Moretti
Editorial Lead

Tom and Jerry style… Within a week of each other, Anthropic and OpenAI announced (separate) PE-backed joint ventures. In essence, both new ventures have the same goal: fast-track enterprise deployment of AI solutions.

  • Yesterday, OpenAI formally announced it’s launching the OpenAI Deployment Company, which will help other companies deploy AI. The venture is in partnership with TPG, Advent, Bain Capital, Brookfield, SoftBank, and others.
  • Last week, Anthropic teamed up with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs to launch an AI services company to deploy Claude across midsize companies.
  • Both ventures seek to help companies overcome the challenges of integrating AI into workflows, and will embed AI engineers into firms to help achieve that.
  • The Ramp AI Index shows Anthropic adoption surged from 24.4% in February to 30.6% in March, continuing to narrow the gap with OpenAI (35.2% adoption).

The exponential effect… It’s a smart play to partner with alternative asset managers like VC and PE firms, since they can encourage AI adoption throughout their portfolio companies. According to Ramp data, venture capital-backed companies lead the way in AI use with an 80% adoption rate. Private equity-backed firms are next at 64%. Everyone else: 45%

“VCs are functioning as a transmission mechanism for AI adoption across their portfolios through top-down directives, portfolio-wide deals, and the general cultural expectation that you should be using the latest tools,” said Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp.

Adoption friction is real… the corporate desire to overcome it is realer. The AI push isn’t just coming from the labs: companies are increasingly hiring internal “AI evangelists” to drive adoption among employees. While these types of roles remain highly concentrated in tech, it’s certainly not only tech (see: Colgate’s AI evangelist).

  • A new IBM study found that 76% of surveyed organizations now have a Chief AI Officer, up from 26% a year ago.
  • From 2023 through 2025, companies posted 225K head of AI roles, up 49% from the prior four years, according to LinkedIn data cited by The Wall Street Journal.

The bottom line:

As the learning curve flattens, the adoption curve spikes… Whether it’s AI evangelists or lab-sponsored deployment services, the goal is the same: flatten the learning curve to adoption. As friction falls away, adoption is likely to spike. Since both companies and employees are influenced by their peers (desiring to keep up with or surpass them), the result could be exponential.

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Rebecca Moretti•Editorial Lead
As the Editorial Lead at Ramp, Rebecca focuses on melding original data with financial news to craft engaging stories that highlight leading indicators. Previously, Rebecca was the Senior Editor of Robinhood’s Snacks newsletter, which she helmed for five years, and was Senior Editor of SoFi’s On the Money newsletter.
Ramp is dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes make informed decisions. We adhere to strict editorial guidelines to ensure that our content meets and maintains our high standards.

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How did Anthropic do it?

Anthropic is still on a tear, with nearly one in four businesses on Ramp paying for Claude compared to one in 25 a year ago. OpenAI adoption fell by 1.5%.