Athira Sethu
Kochi, 8 January 2025
Anthropic, the AI company, is close to raising an additional $2 billion, which will increase its valuation to $60 billion, a Reuters report said. It’s just a few months since Amazon invested $4 billion into the company. According to sources that are not identified, venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading this round of funding, the report said.
This new investment, part of a total $6 billion funding round, shows a significant increase in Anthropic’s value. Just last year, the company was valued at $18 billion during a previous fundraising led by Menlo Ventures.
Anthropic, which competes with OpenAI in the field of AI models, has not commented on the deal. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the funding.
In addition to the new funding, Amazon doubled its investment in Anthropic late last year to $8 billion, as it competes with other tech giants in the growing field of generative AI. The $4 billion that Amazon invested will be converted into company shares during this round of funding.
Founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic’s annual revenue is about $875 million. The company sells access to its AI models directly and through cloud services like Amazon Web Services. Developing these large language models is costly, requiring expensive computing power and top-tier talent.
Anthropic also received $2 billion from Alphabet in 2023. The company’s main competitor, OpenAI, triggered an AI race after launching ChatGPT in 2022. OpenAI’s success helped it raise $6.6 billion in October 2023, which brought its valuation to around $157 billion.
With massive investments in companies like Anthropic and xAI, AI startups have become a major focus for venture capital, accounting for nearly half of the venture capital raised in the U.S. last year.
