# The Consultancy Collision: How Bain Ended Up on Both Sides of the AI Arms Race

- slug: the-consultancy-collision-how-bain-ended-up-on-both-sides-of-the-ai-arms-race
- date: 2026-04-22
- category: Artificial Intelligence

Bain called itself OpenAI’s exclusive partner. This week it joined Google’s DeepMind consortium too. Accenture, BCG, and McKinsey are in both camps. Deloitte took a different road: Anthropic, not OpenAI. The question neither press release asks is what exclusive actually means.

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