Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is close to securing a $2 billion investment in a deal that would triple the value of the four-year-old company to $60 billion.
Chatbot maker Claude AI is in advanced talks about raising new capital from a number of major Silicon Valley investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to people familiar with the situation. The tour comes in two months Anthropic Believer Additional investments worth $4 billion From e-commerce giant Amazon, one of its closest partners.
It is the latest huge financing deal for Amnesty International a company. In October, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in a round valuing the company at $157 billion, while Elon Musk's xAI startup, which… Gained ground over competitors Since launching in 2023, it has raised $6 billion at a $45 billion valuation in December.
These enormous sums are almost unprecedented for venture capital-backed startups, which historically go public long before their valuations reach tens of billions of dollars. Last year, nearly half of the $209 billion spent by U.S. venture capitalists went to AI companies, according to data provider PitchBook.
And competing human startups like xAI and OpenAI, as well as established big tech companies including Meta and Google, are in a fierce race to develop cutting-edge AI models, which require billions of dollars to train and operate. Investors do not expect startups in this sector to be profitable in the near future. Ultimately, though, they believe the technology could create trillions of dollars in value.
San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees with a focus on safety. It has been competitive with leading AI startups over the past year, and has poached several employees from OpenAI in recent months. It was also the first to launch certain features such as the ability of artificial intelligence to control computers.
Leading AI companies, including Anthropic, have shown progress toward models that show signs of “heuristics,” or the ability to look at tasks rather than simply regurgitate information. They are also racing to create artificial intelligence agents that can complete tasks for users.
Industry executives expect 2025 to see more significant breakthroughs in AI technology, including potentially achieving artificial general intelligence — loosely defined as matching or exceeding human intelligence across a range of disciplines.
“We are now confident that we know how to build artificial general intelligence as we have traditionally understood it,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. He wrote in a blog Published this week. “We believe that in 2025, we may see the first AI agents joining the workforce and creating a tangible change in companies’ production,” he added.
Details of the Anthropic fundraiser were first reported in The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic declined to comment. Lightspeed Venture Partners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
