Anthropic announced a partnership with Accenture (NYSE:ACN) to conduct independent evaluation of its frontier artificial intelligence models, with each company committing to invest at least $1 billion in the effort over the next five years.

The partnership will be led by Faculty, Accenture’s AI business unit. Work will include evaluating and red-teaming Anthropic’s models, conducting alignment assessments, and testing model safeguards.

The arrangement is structured as an “embedded evaluation,” a model in which evaluators work inside AI companies with access comparable to that of an employee. This allows evaluators to observe models during training, monitor decisions governing how models are built and deployed, and interact directly with staff. Anthropic said it will fund Accenture’s work directly under the arrangement.

Anthropic described embedded evaluation as distinct from existing external evaluation practices, noting there are currently no established standards for what information embedded evaluators should access or how findings should be reported. The company said it views long-term funding for such evaluations as ideally coming from pooled or government sources.

The partnership is non-exclusive. Anthropic said it plans to announce additional evaluators in the coming weeks, and Accenture may work with other AI developers in similar capacities. Anthropic said it is also in discussions with METR and other nonprofit evaluators to pilot elements of embedded evaluation using separate funding.

Anthropic stated that the use of independent evaluators does not shift responsibility for model safety away from the company. The announcement was framed as an early step toward a broader commitment to embed evaluators within Anthropic, as outlined previously by the company’s chief executive.