Anthropic raises $3.5B to fuel its AI ambitions | TechCrunch

AI startup Anthropic today announced that it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion post-money valuation, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The Series E, which also had participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, brings the company’s total raised to $18.2 billion, according to Crunchbase.

“With this investment, Anthropic will advance its development of next-generation AI systems, expand its compute capacity, deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment, and accelerate its international expansion,” the company wrote in a blog post. “With this foundation, Anthropic is focused on developing AI systems that can serve as true collaborators, working alongside teams to tackle complex projects, synthesize information across fields, and help organizations achieve outsized impact.”

Anthropic’s mammoth round of fundraising comes shortly after the launch of the company’s latest flagship AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a “hybrid reasoning” model that can more carefully consider queries before answering. The model is a part of Anthropic’s broader effort to simplify the user experience around its AI products. Most AI chatbots today have a daunting model picker that forces users to choose from several different options that vary in cost and capability. Labs like Anthropic would rather you not have to think about it — ideally, one model does all the work.

Anthropic’s business is growing. Reportedly, the company’s annual revenue run rate was about $1 billion last year — a number that’s increased by 30% so far this year. But the company is spending an enormous amount developing its AI systems. Anthropic told investors it expects to burn $3 billion this year, per The Information.

In a bid to boost revenue, Anthropic has shifted some of its focus to releasing new tools and subscription plans, including computer-using “agents”; a desktop client, enterprise and “team” tiers; and mobile apps. It has also opened offices in Europe and made high-profile hires, including Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma, and ex-OpenAI safety researcher Jan Leike.

Anthropic was co-launched in 2021 by Amodei, who was once VP of research at OpenAI and reportedly split with the firm after disagreements over the roadmap. Amodei brought along a number of ex-OpenAI employees to start Anthropic, including OpenAI’s former policy lead, Jack Clark.

Anthropic often attempts to position itself as more safety-focused than OpenAI.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.