Anthropic’s $100 million investment in the Claude Partner Network last March has paid early dividends with major companies coming on board as the company pushes toward an IPO.
Anthropic head of partnerships Phil Samenuk wrote in a LinkedIn post that more than 50,000 consultants across 1,700-plus organizations are certified on Claude. Accenture and Cognizant have certified 50,000 people each and Deloitte has certified 15,000.
Samenuk pointed to three pieces of partner news from this quarter:
Cox Communications built AI agents powered by Claude with Accenture — and saw a 7x first-year ROI, 40% marketing content efficiency and 55% faster speed to market, and lead accuracy up from 18% to 97% while cutting lead validation and enrichment costs by 86%
AstraZeneca is drafting clinical study protocols with Claude, working with Deloitte, and shortening review cycles.
Cognizant, working with Travelport, uses Claude's Model Context Protocol (MCP), to enable an AI agent to turn a traveler's conversation into a live, bookable itinerary. Travelport's CEO called it "a genuine AI superpower."
"We've been inspired hearing so many amazing stories of builders progressing their careers and helping clients succeed with this certification," Samenuk wrote.
How Channel Partners See Claude and Competitors
MSPs also like Claude. In the 2026 MSP 501 survey, Claude made the biggest year-over-year jump among AI tools used by MSPs. Claude use increased 28 percentage points up to 35% among AI tools sold by MSPs in the last year.
Of course, there are downsides to all AI tools. Problems include Shadow AI and bad data practices, as well as instances of rogue AI hacks. Partners must be aware of these and vigilant in how they use AI internally and with customers.
“When I'm working on a custom solution or rolling out Microsoft's AI or Claude or GPT you have to think about all the vendors feeding into the solutions we're selling clients,” said Jason Rinker, MSP New Charter’s new director of AI business development. “As their technology partner, we have to ask: what tools are you bringing in that enable this?”
Tech advisor Mike Oliver of SOLUS Technology Solutions also said he works closely with clients to avoid mistakes with AI.
“While AI can be a powerful tool, our role is to help clients interpret the vast amount of information available, avoid costly mistakes, and make informed decisions that align with their long-term business objectives,” he said.
Anthropic Prepares to Go Public
But even high-publicized incidents haven’t slowed Anthropic's optimism. The Wall Street Journal reports Anthropic “is likely” to tell investors of potential revenue opportunities above $30 trillion – above SpaceX’s astronomical $28.5 trillion estimate. To put that in perspective, all 191 tech companies in the S&P 1500 combined for $2.4 trillion in revenue in 2025, according to FactSet.
Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion and reported an operating profit in the second quarter. The company is racing ChatGPT parent OpenAI to an IPO and is expected to go public by early October.