In 2024, Forrester delved into the impact of genAI on smart manufacturing. But now agentic AI is also beginning to play a part in transforming asset-intensive industries. In May 2026, Anthropic announced the creation of a standalone enterprise AI services firm backed by Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and other large asset managers — all committing roughly $1.5 billion. This firm will embed engineers inside client companies. Its mission is to redesign workflows and integrate Claude’s AI into day-to-day operations. Initial deployment will focus on the portfolio companies of the private-equity investors, which include many industrial and manufacturing businesses, before expanding more broadly.

The venture aims to mitigate challenges such as the shortage of people who can implement AI inside real operations. For manufacturers, this means deploying AI inside enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain, and operations workflows. It also means embedding Claude in operational systems, rather than leaving it languishing as a mere knowledge assistant.

Several months ago, Anthropic also formed an industrial partnership with IFS Nexus Black aimed at manufacturing and asset-intensive industries. This partnership launched Resolve, an AI system built on Claude, for predictive maintenance, asset reliability, and operational performance. Resolve uses Claude’s ability to analyze multimodal industrial data (sensor readings, logs, schematics, and text) to identify early signs of equipment failure, support frontline operators and maintenance teams, and reduce costly unplanned downtime.

What Does This Mean For Manufacturers?

In moving beyond office AI (IT) into operational technology (OT), Anthropic offers expanded IT-OT convergence options. Anthropic’s initiatives offer more choice to manufacturers in addition to systems integrators and industrial software partners helping with IT-OT convergence initiatives. But these initiatives also introduce some potential decision automation threats and opportunities.

Earlier Forrester research described AI security guardrails and explained “human in the loop” and “human on the loop” agentic AI safeguards. Anthropic’s initiatives make it clear that the next manufacturing platform war is not about what to manage in PLM and ERP. It’s about who decides when humans no longer have time to make frequent, time-critical decisions. This makes it important to choose the right AI deployment pattern.

 

Over the next few months, we will be tracking Anthropic’s success in enabling deployment patterns that help manufacturers boost their performance. In the meantime, we are interested in hearing your point of view on AI deployment patterns and AI governance. Please feel free to schedule a guidance session or inquiry call.