According to Bloomberg, artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is in the final stages of raising $20 billion in a new investment round. The deal values the startup at about $350 billion. Due to high investor interest, Anthropic has decided to raise twice as much as it initially planned.
The startup raised $13 billion in equity funding just five months ago. However, fierce competition among leading AI labs and the high cost of computing resources have prompted Anthropic to raise new capital as quickly as possible.
Among those expected to participate in this investment round are Altimeter Capital Management, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Coatue Management, Iconiq Capital and the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore. According to reports, the bulk of the funding will be provided by the startup's strategic partners Nvidia and Microsoft.
The Anthropic startup has attracted attention with its successes in recent months. In particular, the introduction of coding agents designed for programming has sparked widespread discussion among software engineers about increasing productivity. Last week, the introduction of new models focused on legal and business research negatively affected the share prices of a number of publicly traded data startups. Investors are worried that artificial intelligence could change existing business models in these areas.
Anthropic’s main competitor, OpenAI, is also reportedly working on a new investment round of about $100 billion. Both startups, as well as the recently acquired xAI project by SpaceX, are likely to prepare for IPOs amid expectations of a “hot summer” in the markets.
