Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude, is finalizing a fresh $3.5 billion funding round that would value it at $61.5 billion, per The Wall Street Journal.
Investors in the new megaround would include Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX.
Anthropic was last valued at $18.5 billion in February 2024.
The round would value Anthropic at more than Elon Musk’s xAI, which was valued at $50 million in November after its $6 billion Series C (which Lightspeed and MGX also participated in).
However, the new round values Anthropic well behind OpenAI, which is closing in on its own new $40 billion funding from SoftBank that will value it at a mind-blowing $260 billion.
More money
The finalizing of the new round comes just about a month after Anthropic reportedly raised a fresh $1 billion from previous investor Google, which had invested $2 billion in October 2023.
The new funding — which was first reported last month — also comes just a couple of weeks after it was reported the startup was in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal led by Lightspeed Venture Partners that would value it at $60 billion.
That Google deal came just two months after Amazon agreed to invest another $4 billion in the AI startup. That deal followed Amazon’s 2023 announcement to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic — a deal that gave the Seattle-based e-commerce and cloud titan a minority stake in the startup.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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