Anthropic is in talks to raise $60 billion in funding

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI research executives, is in late-stage talks to raise $2 billion at a $60 billion valuation, CNBC has confirmed.

The funding round is being led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details are confidential. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the funding news.

Anthropic supported by the great AmazonThe AI ​​chatbot is the creator of Claude. Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, Claude has gained popularity as businesses integrate generative AI chatbots across sales, marketing and customer service functions.

Anthropic and OpenAI, along with tech giants Googleamazon, Microsoft and Metaare in an arms race with generative artificial intelligence to ensure they are not left behind in the market It is predicted to exceed 1 trillion dollars in income over ten years. Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investor, and Amazon supporting generative AI startups with major investments as well as developing its own technologies.

Anthropic’s annual revenue is approximately $875 million and comes primarily from enterprise sales. Lightspeed, an existing investor in Anthropic, declined to comment on the current round.

In November Amazon announced that it will invest an additional $4 billion in Anthropic, bringing its total investment to $8 billion. Amazon remains a minority investor, Anthropic confirmed to CNBC at the time, and has no board seats. Google committed investing $2 billion in Anthropic last year after confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup, along with a major cloud deal between the two companies.

In the same month as Amazon’s latest investment, the company’s cloud division became Anthropic’s “major cloud and training partner.” Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services’ Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its largest AI models.

Anthropic accelerated development last year and in October he said its AI agents were able to use a human-like computer to perform complex tasks. Anthropic said its new Computer Use capability enables its technology to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and perform tasks through any software and real-time web browsing.

Jared Kaplan, chief scientist at Anthropic, said in an interview with CNBC at the time that the tool “can basically use computers the way we do it.” He said he could complete tasks in “dozens or even hundreds of steps.”

OpenAI is reported to be planning to introduce a similar feature soon.

Anthropic in September Claude introduced the Enterpriseits biggest new product since the chatbot’s debut, designed for businesses looking to integrate AI. Anthropic at the beginning of the year made his debut its more powerful AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

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