破局!毕马威寻求入股AI初创企业!

KPMG’s US bosses are touring Silicon Valley in search of AI start-ups that the Big Four firm can work with before they become large enough to threaten its business.

KPMG could sign partnerships or take equity stakes in the start-ups to seal access to their technology, US chief executive Tim Walsh told the FT in an interview.

The initiative comes as AI threatens sweeping changes across professional services, creating new competitors and undermining the sector’s business model in which armies of junior staff bill by the hour.

The Big Four are retooling their businesses by training staff to use the new technology, building AI agents to deliver some services, while also trying to sell clients on the benefits of rolling out AI.

KPMG’s Silicon Valley meetings — brokered by leading venture capital firms — grew out of Walsh’s plan to make himself and his management committee “uncomfortable” by exposing themselves to start-ups that threaten to disrupt their business.

The aim was to ensure executives push for faster adoption of new technology across KPMG, a pledge Walsh made when he was elevated to chief executive last July after more than three decades at the firm.

“Unless you’re seeing it, you may not understand the pace at which change is happening,” Walsh said, adding: “Regardless of how fast we’re moving, I’m confident it’s not fast enough.”

KPMG previously relied on business development teams in Silicon Valley and client relationships to send “signals” up to senior management about technological changes, Walsh said.

Now KPMG’s management committee meets every five or six weeks in Silicon Valley and spends at least one day at the offices of a venture capital fund to meet portfolio companies, Walsh said.

Funds involved so far include Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer, Emergence Capital and JC2 Ventures, run by former Cisco chief executive John Chambers.

Most of the start-up meetings are “educational”, helping KPMG decide how to prioritise its in-house development work, but some are likely to lead to alliances or even potentially a minority equity investment from the Big Four firm, Walsh said.

“We might want to get on a cap table [shareholder register] to signal our commitment to a founder,” he said.

“For emerging growth companies to get the scale that we have is really difficult, so for them to align with us or enable us to invest with them, that is often a great solution for KPMG, for the companies and for the venture investors as well.”

The initiative is likely to lead to more arrangements like those announced since Walsh became chief executive, including an alliance with JC2 portfolio company Uniphore to jointly build AI agents, and a minority investment in Fieldguide, a Bessemer portfolio company selling AI audit tools.

KPMG is also working with much larger AI companies, and last week announced an expanded partnership with Anthropic to develop new products for tax and legal clients.

Walsh dismissed predictions that the big AI companies could ultimately displace consulting firms like KPMG by offering their services directly to corporate customers.

“We have sold and we have built a consulting business. It’s not easy,” he said, referring to the spin-off of KPMG’s first consulting arm 25 years ago and the decision to re-enter the market in 2006.

The Big Four and other consulting businesses are critical routes to market for companies like Anthropic, he said.

“I would like to think that we will be friends forever. They’re spinning up capabilities to be able to help diffuse the technology into businesses, and we are optimally aligned with that, in terms of being able to help them do that.”