(Feb 13): Anthropic has completed a deal to raise US$30 billion ($37.9 billion) in funding from investors at a US$380 billion valuation, including the money raised, bolstering the artificial intelligence (AI) company as it gains ground on rival OpenAI.
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and Coatue Management led the deal, Anthropic said on Thursday. DE Shaw & Co, Dragoneer Investment Group, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Iconiq and MGX co-led the round, along with participation from a who’s who of other investors, from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners to Big Tech firms Nvidia Corp and Microsoft Corp.
The latest funding round roughly doubles Anthropic’s prior valuation — making it one of the world’s most valuable private companies. The deal comes just months after the start-up raised US$13 billion, and at the same time as OpenAI aims to raise up to US$100 billion — a flurry of activity that underscores investors’ frenzy to get a stake in leading AI companies.
Anthropic also confirmed plans to let employees sell shares in the company at the same valuation as the latest round, as Bloomberg News previously reported.
Founded in 2021, Anthropic has positioned itself as being focused on safety and responsible tech development. It has centred its efforts on the lucrative category of enterprise sales in sectors like software engineering, finance and healthcare. In recent months, its revenue run rate has soared, crossing US$9 billion last year. On Thursday, the company said its run rate has increased to US$14 billion.
“This fundraising reflects the incredible demand we are seeing from these customers, and we will use this investment to continue building the enterprise-grade products and models they have come to depend on,” Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.
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Anthropic’s technology, including coding agents that can write and debug software with minimal human input, has recently shaken global markets. The company’s quiet release of a tool to automate certain legal work helped send stocks spiraling earlier this month. And it recently unveiled a new AI model optimised for automating enterprise work tasks, including financial research, leading to a decline in shares for financial services firms.
While Anthropic’s business is growing quickly, the firm is also spending heavily on infrastructure to support AI development and mainstream adoption. The company has previously said it would spend US$50 billion to build data centres in the US. It also plans to use tens of billions of dollars worth of specialised AI chips from Alphabet Inc’s Google. However, those investments are dwarfed by OpenAI, which has committed to spend more than US$1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure in the coming years.
To finance that spending, Anthropic and OpenAI have leaned on backing from some of the large chipmakers and cloud computing providers they do business with, raising concerns about circular deals propping up the industry.
See also: IBM to triple entry-level US hiring with roles recast for AI era
Microsoft and Nvidia previously said they would invest up to a combined US$15 billion in Anthropic; they committed “a portion” of that to the current round, the start-up said. Microsoft is also one of OpenAI’s largest backers and Nvidia is expected to invest US$20 billion in OpenAI’s upcoming funding round.
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