Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude model, is reportedly closing in on a fundraising round that could bring in as much as $10 billion, doubling its initial $5 billion target. The investor appetite for the company is growing, and now the startup could be valued at around $170 billion, a jump from its $61.5 billion valuation earlier this year.
The round is expected to be led by Iconiq Capital. Other backers include TPG, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Menlo Ventures. Anthropic has also held discussions with several large Middle Eastern investors, including the United Arab Emirates state investment fund MGX, about joining the round.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei, siblings and former OpenAI VPs who left OpenAI with a group of researchers over concerns about AI safety and development direction. The company distinguishes itself through its development of “Constitutional AI,” a training method that guides AI behaviour using a set of written principles focused on making AI systems helpful, harmless, and honest.
Anthropic’s flagship AI model, Claude, has evolved rapidly; the latest Claude 3.5 Sonnet can process up to 200,000 tokens, roughly equivalent to 350 pages of text, and it supports both text and image processing capabilities.
The fresh capital will enable Anthropic to accelerate development and expand its infrastructure at scale, keeping pace with OpenAI, which recently pushed its valuation to $500B, and xAI, which got $2B from SpaceX.
