Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic announced on Monday that it has finalized a new funding round that values the company at $61.5 billion, a significant increase from approximately $16 billion just over a year ago. This funding round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, will inject an additional $3.5 billion into the company. Since its inception in 2021, Anthropic has secured over $14.8 billion from various venture firms, including Menlo Ventures, as well as major tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.
The AI boom began in late 2022 with OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT, which triggered a wave of funding that directed billions into numerous startups. However, investor enthusiasm for AI companies waned in 2024, as several prominent startups were absorbed by tech giants such as Google and Amazon. Despite this, interest from investors has revived as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which has developed the chatbot Claude, continue to advance their AI technologies.
Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, and his sister, Daniela Amodei, the president, established the company with the goal of creating AI systems with built-in safety measures. Many members of the founding team had previously worked at OpenAI but departed due to disagreements regarding the funding and release strategies of its technologies in partnership with Microsoft.
In a podcast interview in 2023, Amodei said there was a 10% to 25% chance that AI technology could destroy humanity. But in October, he struck a more optimistic tone, publishing a 14,000-word essay on the potential benefits of AI technologies.
“I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be,” he wrote.
The next month, Anthropic raised $4 billion from Amazon, its largest investor, which has put a total of $8 billion into the startup. Anthropic builds and operates its AI systems using computer data centers owned by Amazon and Google.
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