Anthropic, a prominent player in the artificial intelligence sector and a direct competitor to OpenAI, is currently engaged in negotiations to secure $2 billion in funding. This new funding round, which is expected to elevate Anthropic's total valuation to an impressive $60 billion, is reportedly being led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, as detailed by the Wall Street Journal. Should this funding be successfully raised, it would bring Anthropic's total capital raised to $15.7 billion, positioning the company as the fifth most valuable startup in the United States, following the likes of OpenAI, Stripe, Databricks, and SpaceX.
In recent months, there has been a notable surge in investment within the AI sector, with companies actively seeking substantial funding to support the development and scaling of their computationally intensive technologies. For instance, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion, while Elon Musk's xAI secured $6 billion in funding as recently as November.
The anticipated funding for Anthropic comes on the heels of a previous $4 billion investment from Amazon in November 2024. This partnership has established Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a critical partner for AI model training and the optimisation of Amazon's AI accelerator chips. Additionally, Anthropic had previously attracted an investment of $2 billion from Google, underscoring the fierce competition among tech giants for dominance in the AI space.
Anthropic has made significant strides in the development of large language models (LLMs), particularly with the launch of its most advanced iteration, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, in June 2024. Shortly thereafter, the company introduced an enhanced version capable of issuing commands to applications on behalf of users. According to reports from Industry Leaders Magazine, the Claude 3.5 Sonnet received a score of 49% on the SWE bench-verified measure, indicating a nearly 16% improvement from its original release. Alongside this advanced model, Anthropic also offers a more cost-effective variant known as Claude 3.5 Haiku, which scored 40.6%.
Anthropic's LLMs are accessible via an application programming interface (API), and the company also provides a chatbot service named Claude Enterprise. This service is designed to perform various business tasks such as generating code and creating sales forecasts based on user data.
Financially, Anthropic has reported an annual recurring revenue of $875 million, primarily derived from agreements with a range of enterprises. However, specific details about the company's growth rate have yet to be confirmed. In contrast, it has been observed that OpenAI is projected to conclude the year 2024 with revenue of $3.7 billion, with expectations of reaching $11.6 billion in 2025. Anthropic, which had previously been valued at $40 billion as of September, is poised to see its valuation rise significantly, reflecting the escalating investment and interest in advanced AI technologies.
Source: Noah Wire Services