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Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is about to receive a $2bn investment in a deal that will double the four-year-old company’s value to $60bn.
The maker of the Claude AI chatbot is in advanced talks about raising capital from several top Silicon Valley investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to people familiar with the situation. The cycle comes after two months Anthropic secured an additional investment of $4bn from ecommerce giant Amazon, one of its closest partners.
It’s the latest major financial deal for AI company. In October, OpenAI raised $6.6bn at a company valuation of $157bn, while Elon Musk’s XAI, which owns it. it has gained ground on its competitors since its launch in 2023, it has raised $6bn at a price of $45bn in December.
The amounts are almost unprecedented for equity-backed capital-ups, which have been popular long before their valuations reach billions of dollars. Last year, almost half of the $209bn spent by US investors went to AI companies, according to data provider PitchBook.
Anthropic and competing companies such as xAI and OpenAI, as well as Big Tech companies including Meta and Google, have been in a fierce race to develop the latest AI models, which require billions of dollars to train and run. Entrepreneurs don’t expect starting a business to be profitable anytime soon. However, they ultimately believe that the technology can make billions of dollars in value.
Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company, was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees with a focus on security. It has been competing with AI start-ups for the past year, and has poached many OpenAI employees in recent months. It was also the first to release certain features such as its AI’s ability to control computers.
Leading AI companies, including Anthropic, have shown progress towards models that show signs of “reasoning”, or being able to think about tasks rather than simply repeating information. They are racing to create AI agents that can complete tasks for users.
Industry executives have predicted that 2025 will see significant advances in AI technology, including the achievement of general artificial intelligence – broadly defined as human-like or superior intelligence. different.
“We are now confident that we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. blogged about it published this week. “We believe that, by 2025, we can see the first AI employees ‘joining the workforce’ and changing the productivity of companies,” he added.
Details of Anthropic’s fundraising were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic declined to comment. Lightspeed Venture Partners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
