PwC First to Resell OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise to Clients

The US and UK arms of Big Four accounting firm PwC will start selling OpenAI products directly to their clients, making the firm the first reseller of the ChatGPT Enterprise product geared toward business use.

The agreement with OpenAI announced Wednesday will also make PwC the largest user of the business-focused artificial intelligence tool, the firm said.

The deal comes as the Big Four firms bolster their use of AI and announce alliances with tech companies to bring new tools to their clients. PwC last April announced it would invest $1 billion over three years to expand how its tax accountants, auditors, and consultants use the technology in their day-to-day jobs.

The firm at the time said its investment, which included collaboration with OpenAI partner Microsoft Corp., aimed to free up its professionals from busywork that could be more easily performed by AI tools. Allowing AI tools to weed through general ledger transactions to spot anomalies, for example, would let accountants devote more attention to tasks that need expert eyes.

That experience will help PwC pitch AI tools to its clients, said Joe Atkinson, PwC’s chief products and technology officer.

“It’ll be an important differentiator in the market when we’re talking to clients who are trying to find what we describe as their lighted pathway,” Atkinson said."We can help them because we’ve been walking this path for a while.”

The firm, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. OpenAI confirmed that PwC will be the first reseller of the company’s ChatGPT Enterprise tool and the firm, as of now, will have the largest deployment of the product.

Of PwC’s largest 1,000 clients, 950 are already engaged in generative AI or about to dive in, Atkinson said. Some clients so far are seeing benefits to using AI tools for certain marketing functions or to help with social media posts. Others are using new tools for customer service that move beyond basic chatbots to respond to customer questions.

“We’ve all seen chatbots,” Atkinson said. “The technology capability now is going to give us very, very different experiences through that medium than what we’ve seen before. And that in my mind has really just started.”

The rest of the Big Four firms—Deloitte & Touche LLP, Ernst & Young LLP, and KPMG LLP—also have announced partnerships and investments in AI.

KPMG’s leaders, who announced a $2 billion commitment to Microsoft’s generative AI and cloud services last July, envision generative AI touching all aspects of the firm’s work. Deloitte in May 2023 announced an expansion of its work with Google Cloud’s advanced generative AI capabilities to bring ideas to its clients. EY in October said it was partnering with IBM Corp. to use AI for some human resources processes.