The Software Factory: Enabled by Partners

We are entering the “industrial revolution” of software engineering. Models now write high-quality code, but enterprises need to turn code into value. That is our vision for the software factory: it is the machine that turns code into value. For many enterprises, the software factory will be enabled by partners: consulting & SIs, cloud service providers (CSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), and AI labs.

That is why we are excited to announce the Factory Partner Network (FPN) and our $100M commitment to partnerships across training, deployment, solutions, and marketing.

Intelligence is abundant; value is earned

Value is created when intelligence gets deployed. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are all investing billions in services capabilities of their own. The scale of their investment reinforces our view that models are only the starting point, and deployment is what turns models into value for enterprises.

However, for every dollar the AI labs spend on services companies, they spend hundreds more on AI infrastructure. That gap is the biggest opening in enterprise technology, and it belongs to the partners who provide “complete solutions” including people, infrastructure, and software that enable AI inside large organizations.

Software engineering is much more than code

Even with frontier models, writing code is about 20% of the software development lifecycle. As models improve, the bottleneck increasingly shifts to everything around the code: deciding what to build, designing, testing, securing, shipping, monitoring. Gartner finds that teams applying AI tools across the full lifecycle see 25 to 30% productivity gains. That’s where the software factory comes in, industrializing the entire lifecycle rather than just the act of writing code.

The software factory listens continuously for signals and produces software, with humans as the governance layer. Droids write code, open and review pull requests, run tests, and coordinate across teams, tools, and surfaces. We configure the platform to each organization's enterprise architecture, tuning models, infrastructure, tools, and processes together. Customers see gains across the lifecycle while spending less. Routing work across models can cut token costs by more than 50% at the same quality of outcome.

Leading with Consulting & SI Partners

Enterprises are complex. Legacy code runs mission-critical production systems. Sensitive data cannot leave the security perimeter. Repositories are filled with incomplete documentation. Thousands of engineers work across different types of systems and processes. Consulting & SI partners have been navigating this complexity for decades. They have guided enterprises through technology shifts, from mainframes and client-server systems to the web, cloud, data, SaaS, and now AI.

Consulting & SI partners bring four things no model provides: trust, earned over years, which is the scarcest asset in enterprise AI; people, millions of them, who pair intelligence with empathy, creativity, and the urgency that actually moves an organization; work-for-hire services where the IP created for a customer stays with the customer; and accountability for outcomes rather than consumption of tokens.

At the same time, Consulting & SI firms need to reinvent themselves. Customers want more value, delivered faster and at lower cost. Programs that once required large teams and took quarters or years can now ship with small, software-powered teams in weeks or months. As pricing shifts from billable hours toward outcomes, partners have an opportunity to amplify their people with software.

Factory Partner Network for Consulting & SI Partners

Our investment will train tens of thousands of partners to understand, deploy, and drive outcomes in large enterprises. The Factory Partner Network will start with two pillars that will benefit customers:

Pillar 1: Factory Partner Strategists (FPS)

Partners will work with enterprises to plan and operate their software factory. They will provide:

• Executive briefings, events, and customer education on the software factory
• Business value consulting, use case assessments, and roadmaps
• Proofs of value and production pilots that turn interest into results
• Enablement and certification to scale partner delivery teams
• Joint success planning with Factory teams, from first pilot to scale

For qualifying customers, Factory covers the cost of these activities so customers and partners can move fast from concept through business case and deployment.

Pillar 2: Factory Partner Engineers (FPE)

Partners will be trained, certified, and proven in software engineering with Factory. They will embed with customer teams to design, deploy, and run the software factory across six steps in the customer journey:

• Prepare, agent readiness: readiness assessment, security planning, value baseline, deployment roadmap
• Learn, training and certification: role-based, hands-on training for the teams who will run the factory
• Deploy, the platform in production: infrastructure, software, data, security, and governance aligned to cost and value
• Enhance, workflows and data with integrations, skills, droids, and policies
• Modernize, the migration factory: technical debt in legacy systems, mainframe, data platforms, and applications
• Scale, the transformation factory: the technology estate across many functions, applications, teams, and personas

Strategists make the path to value clear. Engineers make it real. Factory Partner Network (FPN) members get exclusive access to marketing, sales, customer success, product, and engineering resources to grow their businesses. We will help these partners specialize by industry, function, and geography and develop solutions to help customers deploy faster and less cost. Over time more partners will be able to qualify, join, and benefit from the Factory Partner Network.

Why everyone wins

Factory works across the models, surfaces, infrastructures, and tools enterprises already run. As models improve, the platform, partners, and customer outcomes improve with them. The AI labs benefit when more of their models run in production, and the ISVs and cloud providers benefit when those applications land on their platforms and infrastructure. Consulting & SI partners deliver faster with methodology and expertise embedded into software that powers their engagements. Customers get value faster at less cost without giving up sovereignty.

What happens next

We are selecting a founding cohort in the US, EMEA, and APJ. Selection is by invitation, based on enterprise reach, engineering talent, leadership commitment, and appetite for growth. Additional resources and benefits will be provided to the partners who deliver exceptional customer outcomes.

Keeping the cohort small is deliberate. It is the only way to give each partner real attention. The first cohort convenes this quarter, and we will share what we learn so the broader ecosystem gets the benefit of the playbook we build together.

The future is here today. It just is not evenly distributed. Factory runs today inside leading enterprises and consulting & SI partners. We believe every enterprise will have a software factory. The path from code to value runs through partners and their people.

For more information, reach out to partners@factory.ai.