Anthropic Raises $3.5 Billion at $61.5 Billion Valuation, Minting New AI Billionaires

Anthropic's Mega Valuation Mints Seven New AI Billionaires

Anthropic's latest funding round has made the OpenAI rival one of the most valuable startups in the world. It's also turned its founders into billionaires. The San Francisco-based firm on Monday closed a deal led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to raise $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation. In a rare feat of wealth creation, that would give each of Anthropic's seven co-founders a fortune of more than $1.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Anthropic, which opened a Seattle office last year, now valued at $61.5B after raising $3.5B

Anthropic is adding more rocket fuel to its engine as the high-flying San Francisco startup behind the Claude chatbot and AI platform raised another $3.5 billion at a whopping $61.5 billion valuation. This comes after Anthropic announced a $4 billion investment from Amazon in November. Amazon had already invested $4 billion in the company previously. A spokesperson confirmed that Amazon's investments were not part of the latest round announced this week. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI research execs, is one of the highest valued tech startups in the world. Claude is used by a number of businesses including Zoom, Snowflake, and Cursor, and also helps power Amazon's new Alexa+ digital assistant. Anthropic had an annual revenue run rate of about $1 billion as of late last year, according to Bloomberg. The company last year opened an office in Seattle, mainly focused on engineering, and has about 40 employees in the city. It's one of more than 100 tech companies that have satellite offices in the Seattle region, aiming to tap into the region's rich talent pool. Anthropic employees based in Seattle include, among others: Lightspeed Venture Partners led Anthropic's latest round, which included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. With the new funding, Anthropic said it will "advance its development of next-generation AI systems, expand its compute capacity, deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment, and accelerate its international expansion."

Anthropic raises $3.5B at $61.5B valuation to advance its AI research - SiliconANGLE

OpenAI rival Anthropic PBC today announced that it has closed a late-stage $3.5 billion funding round at a $61.5 billion valuation. The Series E deal comes less than two months after the company raised $1 billion from Google LLC. Two months before that, Amazon.com Inc. doubled its investment in Anthropic to $8 billion. Amazon Web Services became the artificial intelligence provider's primary cloud provider last September. Lightspeed Venture Partners led Anthropic's latest funding round. It was joined by Cisco Investments, Salesforce Ventures and more than a half-dozen other backers. It's believed Anthropic had originally sought to raise $2 billion but upped its fundraising target in response to strong investor interest. The investment comes a few days after Anthropic debuted Claude 3.7 Sonnet, its latest and most capable large language model. It combines the features of a standard LLM and a reasoning model. Anthropic says the algorithm is significantly better at math, physics and programming than its predecessors. One of Claude 3.7 Sonnet's flagship features is that developers can customize the amount of time it spends on a task. If the answer to a prompt must be generated quickly, a software team could limit the model's thinking time to a few seconds. That cap can be raised to several minutes or more for complicated tasks. Claude 3.7 Sonnet was introduced alongside a second new offering dubbed Claude Code. It's described as an agentic coding tool. Anthropic says the software, which is embedded in a command line interface, can automate programming tasks that usually require more than 45 minutes of manual work. Today the company said it will use the Series E funding round to further enhance its AI systems. To support the effort, the company will commission more compute capacity. Anthropic uses AWS instances powered by the cloud giant's internally developed AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to support its model development efforts. Last month, Anthropic revealed that its near-term development roadmap will prioritize enhancing Claude Code. The company plans to enhance the tool's ability to interact with external systems such as code repositories. Additionally, Anthropic will equip the tool with better "self-knowledge of its capabilities." The company will also use some of its new funding to support research into mechanistic interpretability. That's an approach to uncovering how LLMs make decisions. In a paper published last year, Anthropic detailed that its researchers had used the method to study how an earlier version of Claude represented concepts. The company hopes that gaining a better understanding of how LLMs process data will make it possible to find ways of making them safer. "This investment fuels our development of more intelligent and capable AI systems that expand what humans can achieve, while deepening our understanding of how these systems work," said Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao. In parallel with its research efforts, Anthropic will launch an international expansion initiative. Last month, the company hired a former Google DeepMind research scientist to lead a new office in Zurich. It previously opened a branch location in Dublin, Ireland. According to Bloomberg, the company passed $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue last year. That number has reportedly grown by 30% in the past two months. Anthropic, which is not yet profitable, generates revenue with an OpenAI-like chatbot and an application programming interface that enables developers to embed Claude into their applications.

Anthropic Raises $3.5 Billion to Develop Next-Generation AI Systems | PYMNTS.com

Anthropic raised $3.5 billion in a Series E funding round to expand its artificial intelligence offerings. "With this investment, Anthropic will advance its development of next-generation AI systems, expand its compute capacity, deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment, and accelerate its international expansion," the company said in a Monday (March 3) press release. The round gave Anthropic a post-money valuation of $61.5 billion, according to the release. The announcement of the funding round follows the company's launch of Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code, the release said. Anthropic plans to make further progress in its AI systems' coding abilities and is focused on developing systems that "can serve as true collaborators, working alongside teams to tackle complex projects, synthesize information across fields, and help organizations achieve outsized impact," according to the release. Businesses have integrated Claude to perform tasks like turning natural language into code, assisting tax professionals, accelerating the writing of clinical study reports, and helping power Amazon's Alexa+ to bring AI capabilities to households, per the release. It was reported Sunday (March 2) that Amazon, which is one of the top investors in Anthropic, said that both companies' AI models are excellent and that Amazon's in-house AI model, Nova, handled over 70% of customers' conversations with the new Alexa. In the Monday press release, after highlighting the ways businesses have integrated Claude, Anthropic said: "Continuing this trajectory, Anthropic remains focused on deepening our understanding of frontier AI systems and ensuring that artificial intelligence advances human progress." It was reported Feb. 24 that Anthropic was finalizing a $3.5 billion funding round after having an initial goal of $2 billion but then convincing investors to raise their investments during discussions.

Anthropic Raises $3.5 Billion, Boosted by Its Latest Claude AI Model

According to the company, the Series E investment round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from a group including Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Salesforce, and former lead investor Menlo Ventures. According to Bloomberg, in late 2024, Anthropic's annual revenue run-rate was roughly $1 billion, but has already increased by around 30 percent so far this year. Anthropic's announcement isn't particularly surprising, as the company released a highly acclaimed new model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, just one week ago. The new model has been praised for its coding abilities, "an area where Anthropic plans to make further progress in the coming months," the company said in its blog post announcing the fundraising round. The new round is a big step up for Anthropic, which raised $750 million at a $15 billion valuation in an early 2024 Series D round. Since then, the company has seen a few direct investments from large firms, including $4 billion from Amazon and $1 billion from Google. Earlier reports about the Series E round claimed that Anthropic was aiming to raise $2 billion, but the company ended up raising an additional $1.5 billion because of enthusiasm for Claude.

AI firm Anthropic valued at $61.5 bn in funding round

San Francisco (AFP) - Anthropic on Monday announced it has raised $3.5 billion in a funding round that valued the artificial intelligence startup at $61.5 billion. Anthropic said the capital will be put to work advancing its AI systems, expanding its computing capacity, and speeding up its international expansion. The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and the list of those taking part included Salesforce Ventures, Fidelity Management, and Bessemer Venture Partners, according to Anthropic. Anthropic last week released what it called its smartest artificial intelligence model to date, particularly when it comes to computer coding. Along with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the San Francisco-based company made available in a limited research preview a digital "agent" called Claude Code tailored to be a tool for software developers. AI companies are pushing out new products at a fast pace and with innovations quickly reproduced by rivals, often at a lower cost, raising concerns about finding a return on massive investments. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, the race has been on to lead in a technology predicted to change the way people live and work. AI models have moved beyond generating images, videos or written works to providing "agents" specializing in fields or tasks. OpenAI released a version of ChatGPT about six months ago that shared its "thinking" process, but Anthropic followed that by enabling its Claude model to command computers as people do. OpenAI responded with the recent release of its first AI agent called Operator with similar capabilities. Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, and its arch-rival are striving to stand out in an increasingly crowded market. Amazon has invested a total of $8 billion in Anthropic, while Google-parent Alphabet has invested $2 billion in the startup.

AI startup Anthropic closes deal that values it at $61.5 billion

The deal comes amid a surge in funding activity for the industry's most prominent AI startups. OpenAI is set to complete a $40 billion fundraising deal that would value the company at $300 billion, nearly double its valuation from just five months ago. Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic said Monday that it had completed a new fundraising deal that valued the company at $61.5 billion, up from about $16 billion a little more than a year ago. Led by the venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, the new round will pump an additional $3.5 billion into the company. Since its founding in 2021, Anthropic has raised more than $14.8 billion from venture firms like Menlo Ventures and tech giants like Amazon, Google and Salesforce. The deal comes amid a surge in funding activity for the industry's most prominent AI startups. OpenAI is set to complete a $40 billion fundraising deal that would value the company at $300 billion, nearly double its valuation from just five months ago. Elon Musk's xAI is in talks for a new financing round that could value it at as much as $75 billion, up from about $40 billion just two months ago, two people with knowledge of the discussions said. OpenAI started the AI boom in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, setting off a funding surge that moved billions into a wide range of startups. Enthusiasm among investors for AI companies cooled in 2024, as several high-profile startups were essentially folded into tech giants like Google and Amazon. But as companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, with its chatbot called Claude, have continued to improve their AI technologies, investor interest has returned. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.) Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO, and his sister, Daniela Amodei, its president, founded the company as a startup that would build AI with guardrails. Like several others on the company's founding team, they had left OpenAI after disagreements with that startup's leadership over how its technologies were being funded and released through Microsoft. In a podcast interview in 2023, Amodei said there was a 10% to 25% chance that AI technology could destroy humanity. But in October, he struck a more optimistic tone, publishing a 14,000-word essay on the potential benefits of AI technologies. "I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be," he wrote. The next month, Anthropic raised $4 billion from Amazon, its largest investor, which has put a total of $8 billion into the startup. Anthropic builds and operates its AI systems using computer data centers owned by Amazon and Google. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Amazon And Google Backed AI Firm Anthropic Secures $3.5 Billion At $61.5 Billion Valuation - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)

Anthropic, a leading AI company backed by Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google, has raised $3.5 billion in a Series E funding round, bringing its valuation to $61.5 billion. What Happened: The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, General Catalyst, Jane Street, and Fidelity Management & Research Company, the company announced on Monday. See Also: Ex-OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever's AI Startup Valued At $30 Billion In Latest Funding Round: Report Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Why It's Important: Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic initially sought to raise $2 billion but exceeded expectations with an oversubscribed round, reported Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the discussion. The company's revenue run rate has grown by 30% this year. The investment follows previous backing from Amazon, which invested an additional $4 billion in November, and Google, which contributed $1 billion in January. Last week, Anthropic introduced an upgraded version of its AI model Sonnet, along with a new agent designed to automate software coding tasks. Meanwhile, SoftBank Group is reportedly in discussions to lead a new funding round for ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The deal could raise $40 billion and value the company at $300 billion, marking a record for private company funding. Elon Musk's xAI hit a $50 billion valuation in November 2024. Perplexity AI, backed by Jeff Bezos, secured $500 million in December, reaching a $9 billion valuation. Image via Shutterstock Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: Apple's iPad Turns 15 Today: Here's A Throwback To When Steve Jobs Explained Called It The 'Third Category' After Phones And Notebooks Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. AMZNAmazon.com Inc$205.23-3.32%OverviewGOOGAlphabet Inc$169.82-1.39%GOOGLAlphabet Inc$167.99-1.34%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Anthropic raises $3.5bn to reach a $61.5bn valuation

The announcement follows a week after the launch of its latest GenAI model, the Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Anthropic has raised $3.5bn in a Series E funding round, taking the four-year-old start-up to a $61.5bn post-raise valuation. The round, announced yesterday (3 March), was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and saw participation from several big name investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, Fidelity Management & Research Company and General Catalyst. Meanwhile, the company's chief competitor OpenAI was recently valued at nearly $350bn, up more than double its previous valuation five months ago. This, while PitchBook data shows that more than a third of all venture capital funding in 2024 went into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning start-ups. According to Anthropic, the new infusion will advance the development of its next-generation AI systems, accelerate its international expansion and expand its compute and research capacity. Just last week, Anthropic announced the launch of its latest generative AI (GenAI) model, the Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which can extend its thinking, allowing users to direct the model to spend more time on a prompt before responding. The newest model showcases an "improved capability" over its predecessor, the Claude 3.5 Sonnet, allocating more turns, time and computational power to complete tasks. "Claude 3.7 Sonnet has set a new high-water mark in coding abilities - an area where Anthropic plans to make further progress in the coming months," wrote the start-up. Anthropic's Claude has been integrated across industries, the start-up said, from video conferencing tools such as Zoom the to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Moreover, Thompson Reuters' tax platform CoCounsel uses Claude to assist tax professionals, while the Danish Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk reportedly uses the GenAI tool to draft clinical reports in minutes, a task which previously took the company 15 weeks. The announcement comes after more than a month of speculation that Anthropic would be heading towards a fresh funding round. While recently, Google reportedly pumped more than $1bn into the start-up, taking its total investments into the start-up to more than $3bn in two years. In 2023, Google invested $300m in the company for a 10pc stake, and around the same time, Anthropic agreed to make Google Cloud its "preferred cloud provider" with the companies "co-develop[ing] AI computing systems". While Amazon has pumped $8bn into Anthropic over the years, starting with a $1.25bn initial investment in 2023, giving the e-commerce giant a minority stake in the business, followed by $2.75bn in March 2024, and an additional $4bn last November. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

With a $61.5B valuation, Anthropic is no longer just OpenAI's rival

Anthropic has finalized a megaround of funding, securing $3.5 billion at a valuation of $61.5 billion, according to a statement to Bloomberg. This funding solidifies Anthropic's status as one of the largest startups globally, amid rapidly growing business metrics. Anthropic's annual revenue run rate was approximately $1 billion at the end of last year and has seen a 30% increase so far in 2023, as reported by an anonymous source familiar with the matter. The company declined to comment on its sales figures, but CNBC noted its projections for 2024 revenue earlier. The financing round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, which contributed $1 billion. Other notable investors included General Catalyst, Jane Street, and Fidelity Management & Research Company, with existing supporters such as Menlo Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners also participating. Lightspeed co-founder Ravi Mhatre expressed excitement for the exponential growth in AI capabilities since Anthropic's inception. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has gained recognition for its AI safety and reliability focus, particularly through its large language model, Claude. Initially seeking to raise $2 billion, Anthropic exceeded that amount in an oversubscribed funding round. The new investment is aimed at developing next-generation AI systems, enhancing computing capacity, and advancing research in safety. Additionally, Anthropic plans to bolster its international presence, specifically in Asia and Europe. Krishna Rao, Anthropic's Chief Financial Officer, stated that the investment would facilitate the creation of more intelligent AI systems that expand human capabilities, while also enhancing understanding of such systems. He noted that these efforts are yielding significant results for customers as both enterprise and consumer usage spikes. Previously, Amazon invested $4 billion in Anthropic in November, bringing its total stake to $8 billion, while Google contributed $1 billion in January, building on its earlier investments. Anthropics' technology contributes to Amazon's new AI-enhanced Alexa assistant, Alexa+. In a recent development, Anthropic launched Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code, which enhances its coding capabilities. With this funding, the company aims to deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment while maintaining rapid momentum in product and commercial innovation. Businesses across various sectors, including startups like Cursor and Codeium, as well as large corporations like Zoom, Snowflake, and Pfizer, are utilizing Claude to enhance their operations. For instance, Replit integrated Claude into its "Agent" feature to convert natural language into code, resulting in a tenfold revenue increase, while Novo Nordisk has significantly reduced clinical report writing time using Claude. Furthermore, Anthropic emphasizes its commitment to improving AI's role in driving human progress and advancing its understanding of frontier AI systems. The Series E round was backed by multiple investors, including Salesforce Ventures, Cisco Investments, and D1 Capital Partners, among others. The generative AI market, involving companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, is projected to exceed $1 trillion in revenue over the next decade. Amazon Web Services has become Anthropic's primary cloud service and training partner, utilizing its specialized chips for model training and deployment. Sustaining its technology development, Anthropic has recently achieved capabilities allowing its AI agents to complete complex tasks on computers, mimicking human interactions, and enhancing automation across multiple applications.

Microsoft's new agents, Anthropic's $3.5 billion, and a new startup: This week's AI launches

AI startup Anthropic raised a $3.5 billion Series E funding round this week, valuing itself at $61.5 billion. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, which also included Bessemer Venture Partners and General Catalyst. The investment will be used to develop the startup's next-generation AI systems, Anthropic said. It will also go toward adding computing capacity, conducting research, and expanding the company globally. The company recently released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which it called its "most intelligent model to date and the first hybrid reasoning model on the market." Anthropic also introduced Claude Code in a limited research preview.

Anthropic's AI secures a $3.5 billion investment, surpassing the value of Mercedes-Benz - Softonic

Anthropic secures $3.5 billion in funding, raising its valuation to $61.5 billion, as it strives to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology Anthropic, the renowned artificial intelligence company, has recently closed an impressive investment round of 3.5 billion dollars, which raises its valuation to 61.5 billion dollars. This amount, for example, exceeds the market capitalization of Mercedes-Benz, which is valued at 60 billion dollars, and although the figure is considerable, it is far from the 300 billion that OpenAI is estimated to be worth. The capital injection comes mainly from Lightspeed Venture Partners and other venture capital firms, in contrast to previous investments made by giants like Amazon or Google. With this new funding, Anthropic plans to continue developing "smarter and more capable AI systems," according to a statement from its executives. Despite this optimism, the company faces significant challenges. Its projected revenue rate for 2024 was $1 billion, but it is now estimated to grow by 30%, which is still insufficient compared to the projected annual expenses of $5.6 billion for the development and maintenance of its operational infrastructure. The recent launch of its new hybrid model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, has shown outstanding performance, especially in programming, reaffirming Anthropic's position as a benchmark in the industry. However, the company relies heavily on venture capital and these rounds of investment for its survival. The competition is fierce, especially against companies with greater financial resources. Despite the challenges, investment in artificial intelligence continues to rise, with capital flows that do not cease, which translates into an optimistic outlook for both Anthropic and the AI startup ecosystem in general. Expectations for the future of AI remain high, which is good news for the segment.