Jim Cramer isn’t known for subtlety, and his June 12 take on Accenture was no exception. The CNBC host agreed with the thesis that the consulting giant is “being outcompeted by OpenAI and Anthropic,” pointing to growing concerns that advanced AI tools are siphoning business away from traditional consulting firms.

The timing matters. Accenture’s earnings report looms, and the stock is under pressure from a question that won’t go away: if AI can do what a $500-per-hour consultant does, why hire the consultant?

The consulting industry’s AI problem

OpenAI and Anthropic aren’t just building chatbots anymore. Both companies announced large-scale enterprise AI services initiatives in 2026, raising billions in capital to place AI engineers directly with clients. In English: the AI labs are becoming consultants themselves.

Accenture has tried to get ahead of this. In December 2025, the company expanded its partnership with Anthropic, creating a dedicated Anthropic Business Group and planning to train approximately 30,000 professionals on Claude models. Similar partnerships with OpenAI positioned Accenture as an implementation partner, helping enterprises deploy AI tools they couldn’t set up on their own.

Anthropic’s IPO and the competitive reshuffling

The competitive picture got more complicated in early June 2026, when Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO. The AI safety company, maker of the Claude model family, is reportedly following the successful public market debut of SpaceX as a signal that the IPO window is open for high-profile tech firms.

An Anthropic IPO would give the company a massive war chest to expand its enterprise services arm, potentially undercutting the very consulting firms it currently partners with. It would also create a publicly traded pure-play AI company that investors could buy instead of, or alongside, traditional consulting stocks like Accenture.

What this means for crypto and tech investors

The Anthropic IPO, if it proceeds, will be one of the most watched tech listings in years. It could absorb significant institutional capital that might otherwise flow into crypto-adjacent AI plays.

The consulting disruption thesis has direct implications for enterprise blockchain adoption. Companies like Accenture have been among the largest consulting partners helping enterprises evaluate and implement blockchain solutions. If those firms lose market share and mindshare to AI labs, the blockchain consulting pipeline could slow, or shift to AI-native firms that have less institutional knowledge of distributed ledger technology.

For investors watching Accenture specifically, the question is whether the company’s partnership strategy amounts to genuine competitive positioning or an expensive exercise in training the people who will eventually work for its competitors. Training 30,000 professionals on Claude is impressive, but if those professionals can be replaced by Claude itself in three years, the investment thesis weakens considerably.