Anthropic has revealed plans to train more than 10,000 ‘frontier deployed engineers’ (FDEs) by the end of 2027 as the firm looks to drive enterprise AI adoption.

The Claude Frontier Academy, backed by $100 million in funding, will see the AI firm work with Accenture, Bain, Capgemini, McKinsey, and others to ramp up training of FDEs.

Steve Corfield, Anthropic’s global head of business development and partnerships, said the investment will target heightened adoption of Claude products and improve skills capabilities for customers.

“A small team of high-agency people with the right skills, access to Claude, and a deep understanding of how their business runs can transform an entire company,” he said.

“The hard part is building that depth of talent, engineers with the highest level of AI fluency who can take Claude from an idea to a system in production and turn it into faster processes and new products and services.”

The move by Anthropic comes just months after the launch of Ode, an enterprise AI services firm launched following a $1.5 billion investment. The joint venture includes support from consulting firms such as Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, with the aim of helping customers implement AI.

How Anthropic’s FDEs will work

According to Anthropic, the academy’s first program, dubbed the ‘Frontier Deployed Engineer Residency’, follows the “medical model for building expertise”.

Engineers will learn in a similar manner to practicing physicians by training on real-world use cases and are assessed before practicing alone.

“FDE Residency engineers learn from practitioners, practice on realistic cases, and are assessed on their work before they earn the credential,” the company explained in a blog post.

“The goal is agentic systems that change how a business runs, from faster, redesigned processes to new products and services.”

The program is designed specifically for “hands-on software engineers with strong fundamentals” and those with an extensive background in working with LLMs and supporting enterprise AI adoption projects.

Participating organizations are allowed to nominate individual engineers, who then undergo a multi-day program with Anthropic engineers and instructors, the company noted.

“They work through a simulated enterprise deployment, from the right use case through security review to handover, and finish with a graded practical on a new scenario,” Anthropic explained.

“Those who pass earn the Claude Resident Engineer badge and move into the 12-week residency, where they lead a real Claude use case at their own organization, supported by Anthropic engineers and learning from their cohort as they build.”

Anthropic revealed the first cohorts under the scheme are already running in San Francisco, New York, and London.

Anthropic’s multi-pronged approach to AI adoption

If you’re wondering why the term ‘FDE’ sounds familiar, it’s because these engineers have become a primary focus for big tech companies over the last year, albeit with a slightly different terminology.

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, announced multi-billion dollar investments in ‘forward deployed engineer’ capabilities earlier this year.

As ITPro reported at the time, FDEs have rapidly become one of the most sought-after technology professionals globally as big tech providers look to accelerate integration of the technology for customers.

A key advantage of FDEs is that they’re embedded directly within customer teams to help support adoption processes and to build custom AI applications. AWS said its own strategy aims to compress integration timelines from “months to days”.

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