Chatbot developer Claude raises $13 billion as investors flock to AI companies
Four-year-old artificial intelligence company Anthropic has reached a $170 billion valuation after one of the largest venture funding rounds, strengthening its position to compete with rivals such as OpenAI in a fierce battle for dominance in the technology.
Delo.ua writes about this with reference to the Financial Times article .
The San Francisco-based company, founded by former OpenAI employees, said the $13 billion investment “reinforces its position as the leading intelligence platform for businesses, developers, and power users.”
The funding round was led by venture capital firms Iconiq Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Fidelity Management & Research Company. Several institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds also participated, including Singapore’s GIC and the Qatar Investment Authority. Anthropic was valued at around $60 billion in March and had initially planned to raise around $5 billion. However, the funding was increased due to strong demand from investors looking to back fast-growing AI companies, even as enthusiasm for public technology companies cooled.
“We are seeing exponential growth in demand across our customer base,” said Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao, adding that clients include Fortune 500 companies and AI startups. “This funding demonstrates the extraordinary confidence investors have in our financial performance and the strength of our partnership with them to continue fueling our unprecedented growth,” he added.
The Qatar Investment Authority’s participation in this round marks Anthropic’s first direct Middle Eastern funding, a move previously avoided by CEO Dario Amodei. Earlier this year, he told employees that the company was changing its approach amid a continued search for capital. “Unfortunately, I think the principle of ‘no bad person should benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult foundation for doing business,” he wrote.
The new investment is the latest in a string of huge deals for AI startups this year. OpenAI is in the process of raising $40 billion from investors led by SoftBank, the largest funding round for a tech startup in history. Meanwhile, a number of companies building AI applications have raised hundreds of millions of dollars at valuations in the billions.
Anthropic’s Claude chatbot launched in 2023, competing with popular rivals like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Anthropic said its projected annual run-rate revenue has surpassed $5 billion — up from $1 billion at the start of the year. That makes Anthropic one of the fastest-growing tech companies in history.
Iconiq Capital partner Matthew Jacobson said the firm decided to write its largest check ever after seeing Anthropic's “impressive” growth across multiple areas, including programming, and its success with large clients. “It's not just about the jump from $1 billion to $5 billion in revenue, it's also about where that money is coming from,” he said.
Updated at 11:50. At the same time, Anthropic itself wrote that the company's valuation had increased to $183 billion.
