OpenAI rival Anthropic has officially closed a deal to raise $3.5 billion at a valuation of $61.5 billion, the company told Bloomberg — cementing its place as one of the largest startups in the world.
The higher valuation, which includes the new capital raised, comes as Anthropic’s business is growing quickly. Late last year, the company’s annual revenue run rate was about $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. So far this year, that number has increased by 30%, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.
Anthropic declined to comment on its sales. CNBC earlier reported its 2024 revenue projections.
The latest deal for the maker of large language models, best known for its chatbot named Claude, was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, which contributed $1 billion, said Anthropic. Other investors who participated in the Series E deal include General Catalyst, Jane Street and Fidelity Management & Research Company, according to an Anthropic statement. Existing investors including Menlo Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners also backed the company in the latest round, the company said.
“Since its founding, Anthropic has been leading fundamental shifts in AI through a relentless, enterprise-centric focus on frontier development and safety,” Lightspeed co-founder Ravi Mhatre said in a statement. “We’re extremely excited by the consistent exponential growth in AI.”
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former employees of OpenAI, has positioned itself as a reliable, safety-conscious firm that users can trust. The company was originally planning to raise $2 billion in the latest financing, but ended up raising more than anticipated in an oversubscribed round, people familiar with the discussions previously told Bloomberg.
The new funding will fuel Anthropic’s competition with OpenAI, which is currently in talks for an even larger $300 billion valuation. Both deals underscore Silicon Valley investors’ continued enthusiasm for funneling big sums to leading AI firms, despite the recent entrance of smaller companies like China’s DeepSeek, which claim to develop similar technology more cheaply.
Anthropic says that it will use the capital to develop the next generation of its AI systems, expand its computing capacity and further its research efforts, including in safety-related areas. The company also said it plans to accelerate its expansion in Asia and Europe.
“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,” Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said in a statement. “These capabilities are driving remarkable outcomes for our customers as our business and consumer usage continue to grow rapidly.”
The round follows additional investments from two major tech companies who had previously backed Anthropic. Amazon.com Inc. invested $4 billion in the company in
November and Alphabet Inc.’s Google invested $1 billion in January. Anthropic is also helping power Amazon’s new AI version of its Alexa Assistant, Alexa+.
Last week, Anthropic launched a more advanced version of its AI model Sonnet along with a new agent that can automate software coding tasks.
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