Chamath is an AI consultant now

Chamath Palihapitiya has taken the CEO role at 8090 Labs, an enterprise AI coding company that raised a $135 million Series A led by Salesforce Ventures. The startup powers EY's AI-native software development framework, which is being deployed to tens of thousands of EY consultants. The move signals growing investor confidence in AI implementation services and the convergence of AI with professional services.

Hi operators — another week, another spectacular investment round we couldn't ignore. This newsletter is dedicated to company building in AI services, not just analysing deals. But the sheer volume of recent announcements got us thinking about what they signal for the market now, and wanting pressure test our ideas in public. Meanwhile, back to the day job: we launched our pricing benchmarking survey this week. If you contribute, you'll get access to the full dataset once the results are in: https://form.typeform.com/to/LsAJFlc1 https://form.typeform.com/to/LsAJFlc1 -Daria 💰 Market Monitor AI services M&A + Investment Accenture continues to deploy the $9BN earmarked for M&A, this time buying a 400-person ITCo in Denmark. A few interesting deals in recruiting & training. And, of course, the blockbuster 8090 Series A. Notable Investments DK, AI implementation Mjølner Informatics has been acquired by Accenture. The 400-person IT subsidiary of Danish telecoms and utility group Norlys joins Accenture to expand its Nordic digital engineering capacity. Link https://www.consultancy.eu/news/13983/accenture-acquires-danish-digital-solutions-group-mjlner-informatics DE, AI implementation Nagarro is being acquired by Persistent Systems in a ~€1.2bn take-private deal. The combination creates an AI-led engineering group with 46,000+ people across 40 countries, explicitly targeting a $2.9bn revenue run-rate. Link https://www.nagarro.com/en/news-press-release/persistent-nagarro-business-combination-agreement US, AI implementation Kopis and Acuitas have been acquired by Velosio in two simultaneous transactions, deepening the Microsoft channel partner's Azure, business applications and AI delivery capabilities. Link https://msdynamicsworld.com/press-release/velosio-deepens-its-investment-top-microsoft-partner-acquisitions-kopis-and-acuitas US, AI training Uplimit has been acquired by Handshake. The AI-native corporate learning pioneer joins the university recruiting network as it builds a large-scale AI skills academy and job network for early-career workers. Link https://joshbersin.com/2026/06/handshake-acquires-uplimit-ai-skilling-takes-a-new-direction/ IN, AI recruiting Taggd has been acquired by EMA Partners India in a ₹113 crore $11.9m all-cash deal, adding an AI-powered recruitment platform to the executive search firm's talent acquisition capabilities. Link https://huntscanlon.com/ema-partners-india-acquires-recruitment-process-outsourcing-services-provider-taggd/ Notable M&A JP/US, AI implementation GenerativeX has raised a $4M Series A led by Nissay Capital, with Salesforce Ventures participating. The forward-deployed AI engineering firm serves 80+ regulated financial services and life sciences clients and will use the funds for US expansion and its own acquisitions. Link https://www.morningstar.com/news/pr-newswire/20260629sf93836/generativex-closes-4-million-series-a US, AI implementation 8090 Labs has raised a $135M Series A led by Salesforce Ventures, with Chamath Palihapitiya stepping in as CEO. The enterprise AI coding company powers EY's AI-native software development framework, which is being rolled out to tens of thousands of EY consultants . Link https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/29/chamath-palihapitiya-raises-135m-series-a-for-his-ai-coding-startup-takes-ceo-role/ EU, AI implementation Investcorp has founded a new European software engineering growth platform, combining NetRom Software ~460 staff, Romania delivery and Trivium eSolutions ~180 staff, Industrial AI as founding members, with stated plans to acquire further complementary firms. Link https://www.investcorp.com/netrom-software-and-trivium-solutions-to-form-new-growth-platform-for-software-engineering-backed-by-investcorp/ Have we missed an interesting deal? Or do you want to correct details? Just hit reply to let us know. 🙌 Partner Program Updates models + platforms Alliances continue to be formed across the board. Microsoft launches a $2.5BN implementation unit while EPC Group launches a "Copilot Rescue" engagement product. McKinsey reportedly earns approximately 25% of its global fees from outcome-based pricing. OpenAI: The Partner Network went live on 30 June: a $150M global programme with a plan to enable 300,000 certified consultants by year-end, with BCG as launch partner. Link https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai-partner-network/ Cognizant simultaneously joined the OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program, applying GPT-5.5 to take enterprises from vulnerability discovery to validated fixes. Link https://news.cognizant.com/2026-07-02-Cognizant-and-OpenAI-bring-frontier-AI-cyber-defense-from-vulnerability-discovery-to-validated-fixes HP Inc. launched a Frontier strategic partnership with OpenAI on 29 June, deploying AI across customer experiences, software development and internal operations. Link https://www.hp.com/us-en/newsroom/press-releases/2026/open-ai-partnership.html Anthropic: Globant announced a multi-year alliance on 1 July, introducing Claude-powered AI Pods and giving 28,500 employees Claude access and certification training. Link https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/globant-announces-an-alliance-with-anthropic-to-redefine-enterprise-ai-delivery-with-claude-powered-ai-pods-302813858.html DataArt joined the Claude Partner Network as a Select services-track partner on 30 June. Link https://www.einnews.com/pr news/923032232/dataart-joins-anthropic-s-claude-partner-network-as-a-select-partner-in-the-services-track Snowflake became a launch partner for Claude Sonnet 5 on Cortex AI. Link https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/claude-sonnet-5-snowflake-cortex-ai/ Governor Newsom announced on 29 June that Claude will be available to all California state agencies, with cities and counties receiving a 50% discount — a major public-sector implementation demand signal. Link https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/06/29/governor-newsom-announces-a-first-of-its-kind-partnership-providing-anthropic-tools-to-state-agencies-and-improving-services-for-californians/ Google Cloud: Bain & Company announced a partnership on 27 June, combining Google Cloud's AI solutions with Bain's strategy, implementation and product engineering capabilities — strategy houses moving down the delivery stack. Link https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bain--company-announces-partnership-with-google-cloud-to-enable-accelerated-and-secure-enterprise-scale-ai-transformations-302808415.html NiCE: Launched its AI Specialization partner program on 1 July, naming Accenture, Deloitte, TTEC, Cirrus and Route 101 as inaugural partners. Link https://www.morningstar.com/news/business-wire/20260701795827/nice-launches-ai-specialization-program-recognizing-partners-driving-significant-ai-outcomes-for-enterprises Microsoft: Committed $2.5bn and 6,000 employees to a new "Frontier Company" on 2 July — its own AI professional services business helping customers build and manage AI applications. The biggest channel story of the week: labs verticalising into implementation both validates the market and competes with the SI channel. Link https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/microsoft-commits-2point5-billion-6000-employees-ai-implementation-unit.html EPC Group launched a fixed-fee, six-week "Copilot Rescue" engagement for stalled Microsoft 365 Copilot rollouts — early evidence of the adoption-failure remediation market forming. Link https://natlawreview.com/press-releases/epc-group-launches-microsoft-365-copilot-rescue-engagement-stalled Market signals: McKinsey now earns approximately 25% of its global fees from outcome-based pricing rather than billable hours, per its UK managing partner — a significant pricing-model datapoint for AI-era consulting economics. Link https://aiweekly.co/alerts/mckinsey-ties-25-of-fees-to-outcomes-as-ai-erodes-billable-hours Snowflake Marketplace partners crossed $100M in bookings in H1 2026, driven by agentic AI adoption and a reported 277% year-on-year growth. Link https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/technology/2026/snowflake-marketplace-surges-past-100m Did we miss a partner program update from any of the major players which you feel is important? The operator essay: Chamath is a consultant now Services businesses have never made the front page of anything. The awkward younger cousin of the much sexier product company, services was never where ambitious founders cut their teeth. In our conversations with founders over the past nine months, we kept noticing a pattern: a former SaaS founder finds themselves between companies and starts a consulting business. Demand is strong. Revenue grows fast. And still they treat it as a holding pattern, a way to make money while getting exposed to a variety of interesting problems, hoping one of them turns out big enough to build a “real” company around. Two years ago, after a few fun years of flipping SPACs, that is exactly where Chamath Palihapitiya found himself. Source: Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chamath im-starting-an-incubator-funded-entirely-activity-7151403359109795840-rOM-/ Fast forward to today, and one of the highest-status capital allocators in tech has announced he is back in the game as the CEO of a services business. The "incubator" that set out to build products has transformed itself into a "software factory". A dev shop, in plain English. The conclusion, apparently: the money is in delivery. Along with the CEO announcement came a $135m Series A, unprecedented for a services business. If you haven't caught up on this, the TechTimes https://www.techtimes.com/articles/319378/20260630/palihapitiya-takes-ceo-role-8090-labs-after-135m-salesforce-ventures-led-round.htm and Hackernoon https://hackernoon.com/lang/en/$135m-for-a-dev-shop-im-bullish-on-8090s-bet-on-the-simplest-business-model-on-the-internet pieces are good places to start. Why 8090 is an AI Enablement services business Chamath calls it a "Software Factory". Strip the branding and you find a good old services business: bespoke software, built for one customer at a time, delivered by people wielding AI. The premise of using AI to spin up applications quickly is not new, and that market already has its winners. Lovable, Replit, Retool and friends have turned "describe an app, get an app" into a commodity. Chamath takes the thesis a step further. In his view of the world, laid out in his 2025 Current State of AI deep dive https://chamath.substack.com/p/deep-dive-the-current-state-of-ai and the more recent " A Conversation with One of My 8090 Co-Founders https://chamath.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-one-of-my-8090 ", the real value sits in the last 10% of every application. Code generation has made the first 70% nearly free. Anyone with a Cursor subscription can produce the demo. Which means the 70% is no longer the expensive part, and it was never where deals die. Deals die in the 10%: the SAP integration, the audit trail, the security review demands, the data migration, the one deranged workflow finance runs month-end on. There is a delicious irony in the name. 8090 is named after the part of the problem AI just commoditised, and its margin will have to come from the part the name says you don't need. That is where 8090 wants to play: customers who care deeply about the 10% and are fed up with off-the-shelf software. Heavily regulated enterprises, in Chamath's own words, who get sold not just the software but the compliance wrapper around it. The distinction the company keeps drawing, and it's the right one, is between vibe coding and governed, AI-native development. The former is fine for a prototype but a huge liability in a hospital billing system or a bank's core ledger. This is not Lovable's market, or Retool's. It is territory held for decades by large software vendors and system integrators. On one of many All-In episodes, Chamath described an aerospace customer who came to 8090 because no piece of software on earth understands how they want to run their company. Before AI, a company like that morphed itself around whatever tools existed and hired FTEs and consultants to plug the gaps. Now they can start from the business process they actually want and have 8090 build it, using AI plus labour to make the economics work. Salesforce enters the chat Salesforce Ventures led the round: one of the few names on the cap table who are neither an All-In Bestie nor a previous backer of the category. This bet is entirely new. It is also a strange one at first glance. Chamath has called CRM, Salesforce's core category, "totally screwed". His argument, roughly: companies spend $50-100m a year on a platform to use five features. Give them the five features as workflows, give them a database, and get out of the way. Here is what we suspect is going on. Salesforce reports a revenue line called "Platform and Other": companies licensing Force.com https://Force.com as the backbone for their own products, internal tools customers build on top of Salesforce, plus Heroku and Slack. In FY26 that line hit $8.9bn, 21.4% of total revenue, up from 17% in FY22. And the platform economy around it is far bigger than Salesforce's own cut: back in 2024 Battery Ventures estimated https://www.battery.com/blog/when-and-why-to-build-on-the-salesforce-platform/ the ISV ecosystem built on Salesforce generates over $30bn in revenue for the ISVs themselves, of which Salesforce's take was around $6.7bn. A fifth of the company's revenue is, in effect, rent. AI-native development threatens the rent. If you can build a compliance-grade vertical application from scratch, why keep paying for the backbone? Veeva, the poster child of the model, built its multi-billion dollar pharma CRM entirely on Force.com https://Force.com starting in 2007 and has announced it is off the platform by 2030. Here’s how I interpret the move: a platform incumbent buying insurance against the erosion of a fifth of its revenue. And note the precise shape of the bet. Salesforce leading the round of a company whose thesis is "SaaS gets rebuilt and TAM shrinks from $5 trillion to $500 billion" is only a paradox until you split SaaS in two. Systems of record may well survive. The app layer built on top of them is what gets rebuilt at a fraction of the previous cost . Salesforce appears to agree. What it tells us about AI's biggest losers Ask people who will lose the most from AI and you get three different hypotheses: consultants, SaaS, or human labour. If you’re building an AI services business, your answer to this question determines how you build your company. If you think consultants will lose a popular view, going by Accenture and Infosys share prices, which we covered before https://www.aienablementinsider.com/p/accenture-s-free-fall-and-the-ai-consulting-paradox , you sidestep them completely and partner with AI vendors directly, betting that your AI credibility and speed beat their distribution and scale. You are going head to head with the SIs. If you think SaaS loses, as Chamath does, you actually need consultants in the picture. 8090 has a partnership with EY, whereby 8090’s Software Factory platform powers EY’s AI-native software development framework https://www.ey.com/en us/newsroom/2026/03/ernst-young-llp-and-8090-launch-ey-ai-pdlc . In March 2026, EY announced plans to deploy it to consultants across U.S. operations and client engagements, mentioning that internal use cases increased software development efficiency by 70% while accelerating delivery speeds by up to 80 times. In Chamath’s world, somebody an EY or similar has to help the end client decide which software gets rebuilt, before 8090 can step in. They become a valuable channel partner, not competition. If you think it's human labour, you take the Sierra approach: find one process, disrupt it completely, go all in. We covered Bret Taylor’s views https://www.aienablementinsider.com/p/the-three-ai-adoption-insights-from-bret-taylor-s-interview-you-probably-missed previously as well. Notice, too, that everyone's stated loser conveniently matches their own book. Chamath says SaaS dies and keeps consultants alive as his channel. Sierra's founders say labour. AI vendors imply consultants. Nobody in this debate is doing disinterested analysis. They are announcing their positioning. Which is fine, as long as you do the same, deliberately. The trap we see most often is holding all three views at once: partnering with SIs while competing with them, selling seats while preaching the death of the seat. Your view of the world determines your go-to-market, your partners and your pricing. You can't hedge it. Chamath picked SaaS and built a dev shop. Salesforce picked its own app layer and wrote him a check. Sierra picked labour and picked one process. All three wrote their answer down in the only place it counts: the org chart and the price list. Where's yours written?