Anthropic, the startup behind ChatGPT competitor Claude, is looking to raise an additional $2 billion in funding, according to The Information. Google (GOOG) -), which acquired a 10% stake in the startup last year, is expected to make an additional investment in this latest funding round.
As the startup looks to expand its resources and pool of investors, the company is seeking a valuation between $20 and $30 billion. Anthropic says it has been earning revenue at a $100 million annualized rate.
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This latest Big Tech funding comes about a week after Amazon (AMZN) -) said that it will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic. As part of the deal, announced Sept. 25, Amazon employees and customers will gain early access to Anthropic's technology and Anthropic will make use of Amazon's cloud services to power and train its models.
It remains unclear what kind of stake Amazon now owns in Anthropic, but the company said that it will not gain a board seat and that its holding will amount to a minority position.
Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, said that the investment "allows us to continue to scale up our models," adding that the company "has obtained the money in a way that allows it to prioritize safety."
“We are excited to use AWS’s Trainium chips to develop future foundation models," he said in a statement.
Anthropic, in the midst of this flurry of fundraising rounds, is striving to compete with its better-known rival, ChatGPT, a user-facing chatbot that became one of the fastest-growing social media apps in history when it launched last year. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has garnered a total of around $13 billion in investments from its own Big Tech giant: Microsoft (MSFT) -).
ChatGPT remains one of the biggest websites in the world, ranked right around Netflix and Pinterest with 1.4 billion total visits in August, according to Similarweb. Anthropic's Claude, meanwhile, clocked around 26 million site visits in the same month.
This ongoing AI arms race comes against a backdrop of concern from researchers and scientists over an as-yet unregulated technology that could pose severe (though not world-ending) socioeconomic impacts, with decision-making control relegated to just a few for-profit corporations.
If you work for Anthropic or OpenAI, contact Ian by email ian.krietzberg@thearenagroup.net or Signal 732-804-1223
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