AI · 23 October 2026 · 5 min read
The Financial Times says Anthropic and Hg will back a European consultancy. Neither company has confirmed it
The report, on 23 October, describes an independent firm with hubs in London and Berlin, meant to launch by the end of the year, putting engineers inside European companies to build on Claude. Anthropic would fund its share from its own balance sheet. Hg and Anthropic declined to comment.
The Financial Times reported on 23 October that Anthropic and Hg, the London private-equity firm, plan to back a new independent company that would put engineers and consultants inside European businesses. The people the paper cites say the work would be building products on AI and fitting it into operations that already exist, with hubs in London and Berlin and a launch by the end of 2026. Anthropic’s money would come from its own balance sheet. Hg’s would come through funds it manages, including the listed HgCapital Trust. The same accounts say the firm would also work with companies Hg already owns, and that its main targets are software businesses and other white-collar work.
Both companies declined to comment. Until one of them publishes the plan, the consultancy is a report, not a launch. The paper calls it the first standalone consultancy Anthropic has backed in Europe, and notes that Anthropic has worked with Hg’s portfolio since 2024. Hg, the report says, already employs about 150 AI specialists who help its companies, and the new firm would sit alongside that team rather than replace it. A headcount of specialists who already exist is not a headcount of the venture, which has not been named.
An engineer in the building is a different product from an API
If the report is right, the thing being sold is not another key to Claude. It is people who will sit in a company whose systems were not built for a model, and wire one in. That work is where a large share of the money in enterprise software has always been, and it is why the consultancies already reselling Claude would be overlapped by a firm Anthropic itself had funded. Overlap is not a contract. The report does not name a client, a fee, or a person who will run it.
The reason to file it now is the shape of the claim, and the fact that it is still a claim. A reader can check, later, whether a company with a London and a Berlin address actually employs anyone, and whether Anthropic’s name is on the shareholder list. Until then the careful sentence is the one the two companies chose: they did not confirm it.