Happy Friday,
New partnering playbooks were unveiled this week.
Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Anthropic tightened their partnership across models, cloud, and hardware. Microsoft sharpened its “Frontier Firm” story and pushed Agent 365 deeper into the ecosystem. Google Cloud announced its all-star partners, raising the bar, and providing a success playbook. AWS introduced consulting agents and Partner Agent Factory. Salesforce moved Agentforce into real public sector production. Accenture partners in the marketing space. If you run partner or GTM, this is a week to check whether your AI story matches where the platforms are going. Are you planning to hire an ecosystem orchestrator in 2026? It would be a great move.
Microsoft, NVIDIA and Anthropic, a new triangle at the top of the stack
Anthropic, NVIDIA and Microsoft announced a tighter set of strategic partnerships across cloud, models and silicon. Anthropic will scale Claude on Azure, with a commitment to very large Azure compute purchases and access to next-generation NVIDIA systems. Claude is now the only frontier model available across all three hyperscalers.
NVIDIA and Anthropic will co-design models and hardware, so future Claude workloads and future NVIDIA architectures are tuned for each other. Microsoft and NVIDIA also step up as major investors.
My take for Partner and GTM leaders
If you align to any hyperscaler, you need a clear view on how you will use Claude, OpenAI, Gemini and your own models together.
Practical playbook moves:
Create a simple “model routing” guide.
Build a one-pager that explains when your teams use Claude, when they use other models and why. Tie it to use cases, risk and price.Launch a “Claude on Azure” offer if you are an Azure partner.
Package a concrete solution that combines Claude, Azure AI services and your vertical IP. Aim for one key win that proves value, then scale.Bring NVIDIA into your story.
Even if you never sell hardware, show that you understand the GPU stack your solutions will sit on. Many boards now ask about resilience, cost and roadmap at the chip layer.
Partners who can explain this three-way relationship in plain language will look much more credible in C-suite conversations.
So, what makes a standout Google Cloud partner?
Google Cloud used its Partner All-stars list to quietly reset the bar. The standout signal is a dedicated AI Innovation spotlight. The winners are, besides building POCs, driving enterprise-wide AI adoption, measurable outcomes and agentic use cases that touch core processes.
My take for Partner and GTM leaders
Google is handing you the playbook.
Productize. Turn your strongest AI work into named offers that clearly change how a function runs, beyond task automation.
Align to the scorecard. Build a tight plan around Delivery Readiness, certifications and co-marketing that feeds the Google pipeline.
Sell as one team. Pair sales and solutions engineering on your top AI pursuits with shared targets and a single story about transformation, not tooling.
What are Frontier Firms? Microsoft Ignite Highlights
Microsoft introduced “Frontier Firms”, organizations that embed AI across the whole business and use agents to scale decisions and execution.
The partner story leans on being “Customer Zero”. Partners are expected to use Copilot and agents inside their own firms, measure the results, then take those patterns into the market.
On the product side, Microsoft Agent 365 is becoming a key control plane for enterprise agents. Kore.ai joined as a launch partner, bringing an enterprise agent platform into the Microsoft ecosystem.
At the same time, ServiceNow extended its integrations with Microsoft. It offers governance and monitoring for agents and copilots that run across Microsoft 365 and the Now Platform.
Microsoft also refreshed Azure AI incentives through ISV Success and the AI Cloud Partner Program.
My take for Partner and GTM leaders
Microsoft is quietly changing the bar for what an “AI partner” looks like.
Partners that show up as Frontier Firms themselves may well get better co-sell opportunities, more roadmap visibility and more trust from Microsoft sellers.
To stay relevant, Microsoft partners need three ingredients:
Visible internal adoption.
Dogfooding? Run Copilots and agents at scale inside your own company. Publish simple internal case studies. Use those numbers in every pitch and with every Microsoft field contact.A clear Agent 365 services catalog.
Map where agents should sit across Microsoft 365, Dynamics and Azure. Turn that into offers: design workshops, governance accelerators, managed operations. Mention ServiceNow integration if you work on both platforms.Incentive-aware GTM.
Tie your offers directly to Microsoft’s incentives. Make sure your slides state how your project helps Microsoft hit its own AI and Azure targets.
How does this inform and inspire what you do at your own company?
AWS Professional Service Agents, consulting built around agents
AWS introduced AWS Professional Service Agents, an agent-first consulting model that bakes specialized AI agents into every stage of an engagement. The Delivery Agent ingests requirements, designs architectures and generates code, then orchestrates other agents for migration and modernization that build on AWS Transform, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, and tools like Amazon Q Developer and Kiro. Early examples show timelines shrinking from months to weeks, with consultants focused on context, strategy and relationships rather than repetitive build work.
The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center also launched a Partner Agent Factory, with selected partners building agents and tools for multiple industries.
At the same time, Box and AWS announced a multi-year strategic collaboration. Box will integrate services such as Amazon Q, Amazon Bedrock and other AI tools, and Box will be sold more deeply through AWS Marketplace. The shared message is that agents will sit on top of well-governed enterprise content, powered by AWS.
My take for Partner and GTM leaders
Use this as a template for your own agent factory.
Name your model. Document how you combine human consultants and agents, from discovery to deployment. Give that system a name and a simple visual so AWS field teams and customers can grasp it fast.
Anchor on AWS primitives. Align your offers to the same building blocks, for example Bedrock AgentCore, AWS Transform, Amazon Q. This makes it easier to plug into ProServe motions and co-sell conversations.
Sell speed with proof. Start instrumenting before and after metrics on a few flagship projects. Show how agents cut effort and cycle time, and manage risk. That is the story enterprise buyers want to hear.
My take for Partner and GTM leaders
AWS is showing you what a repeatable agent business can look like.
If you build on AWS, look closely at your own delivery patterns.
Where do you already behave like a small agent factory.
Which parts of that process are systematized, and which are still custom.
How your current play maps to what AWS now promotes.
Practical playbook ideas:
Brand your own agent factory.
Give it a name and a simple visual. Document your steps from discovery to design to deployment to operations. This helps your sellers and helps AWS know when to bring you in.Offer managed agent operations.
Most customers do not want to run agents alone. Wrap monitoring, policy, testing and optimization into a managed service. Price it clearly.
This is a pattern you can copy. You do not need AWS scale to explain a clear agent factory to your customers.
Salesforce, Agentforce, and AI in the public sector
Salesforce advanced its Agentforce story on several fronts. It announced a broad partnership with ASGN, who will weave Agentforce into its digital engineering practice. Agentforce moved into a high-visibility public sector deployment. The IRS is rolling out agents across several divisions to help with tasks such as summarizing cases and searching complex documents. Salesforce further expanded its relationship with Google Cloud through new integrations that pull Gemini models into Salesforce and expose Salesforce data inside Google Workspace.
My take for Partner and GTM leaders
Salesforce is turning Agentforce into a horizontal agent fabric that spans CRM, data and productivity tools. If you are a Salesforce partner, customers may ask, “What is our Agentforce plan”.
Playbook ideas:
Build Agentforce blueprints.
Pick a few high-value processes in Sales, Service, Public Sector or Commerce. Define which agents you deploy, which data they use, what guardrails exist, and when humans step in. Turn this into repeatable accelerators.Position cross-cloud skills.
If you work across Salesforce and Google Cloud, make that very clear. Customers want fewer silos and simple stories that connect CRM, data and productivity.
Agentforce is becoming a natural place to host enterprise agents for many customers. The partners who bring structure and discipline to that story will capture early budget. Do you partner with these organizations?
AMD, Cisco, and HUMAIN: Building AI Infrastructure at Scale
This new joint venture is rolling out up to 1 GW of AI infrastructure by 2030, starting with a flagship 100 MW in Saudi Arabia. AMD’s latest Instinct MI450 GPUs and cutting-edge Cisco networking headline the build. What stands out isn’t just the size; it’s the business model—true partnership, with AMD launching a new Center of Excellence to fast-track local innovation. For the global competitive AI race, this is a reminder: scale, openness, and real partner commitment win deals.
Delivering high-performance global AI infrastructure at scale requires strong partnerships.
Amazon Web Services and HUMAIN are joining forces with NVIDIA plan to deploy up to 150,000 advanced AI accelerators within a dedicated “AI Zone” in Riyadh. The deal will make AWS HUMAIN’s preferred AI partner worldwide, and Amazon Bedrock will give customers enterprise-ready access to leading foundation models and specialized AI services, all on a secure, integrated platform.
What sets this move apart is the scale. Global enterprises and innovators will have access to the world’s most modern AI infrastructure. AWS will also train 100,000 Saudi citizens and support an upskilling initiative for women.
Accenture Invests in Alembic: causal AI for real marketing impact
What’s it like to demonstrate the impact of marketing campaigns on business outcomes? Those in the trenches know it’s not easy. Accenture is betting big on causal AI, partnering with Alembic to modernize marketing measurement. Alembic’s causal intelligence platform links marketing activities and true cause-and-effect with sales, ROI, and revenue impact across every touchpoint.
Tomás Puig, founder and CEO of Alembic: ‘This investment and collaboration with Accenture will help us reach more companies that want to understand what really drives their results.’
With this investment, Accenture clients can go from post-campaign analyis to real-time optimization, allocating budgets to what boosts results.
My take: measurement is becoming both more rigorous and more actionable. AI will empower marketing teams to defend investments and drive outcomes on both sides of the boardroom table.
Ecosystem orchestration will be a skill and a key motion for tech companies. The most compelling value prop is increasingly ‘who you partner with and how’. It’s allowing tech companies to grow faster (partner/integrate vs build). And it’s allowing them to build influence.
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Disclaimer: This post is for information only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Views are my own and I’m not affiliated with any companies mentioned.