Anthropic, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, has closed a new round of funding worth $300 million, which brings the company’s valuation to $4.1 billion. The funding round was led by Spark Capital and comes just a month after Google LLC invested $300 million in the startup. Anthropic was founded in January 2021 by a team of researchers, engineers, and policy experts who specialize in reinforcement learning from human feedback. The startup is focused on AI safety and is determined to build more reliable and steerable systems that provide more predictable results to eliminate bias and overcome one of the key limitations of conversational AI.
Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, is currently in closed beta but is expected to combat harmful prompts by explaining why they are dangerous or misguided. The startup has raised a significant amount of capital, even before this year, having raised $704 million via Series A and B rounds in 2022. The Series B round was led by the now-disgraced FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Anthropic’s sky-high valuation, which generates minimal revenue, reflects the incredible fervor generated by the emergence of generative AI. Generative AI refers to AI algorithms that can generate text, images, and other media when prompted to do so by users. This is an area that has been the subject of years of research, and analysts believe the capabilities displayed by ChatGPT, a large language model that powers ChatGPT, could be useful in dozens of applications and perhaps even rival Google LLC in online search.
This week, generative AI startups have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital firms. Salesforce Ventures, the VC arm of Salesforce Inc., announced the launch of a new $250 million fund that seeks to invest in promising generative AI startups. The company is planning to invest in four companies, including Anthropic, Cohere Inc., Hearth.AI, and SuSea Inc., creator of the natural language search website You.com. Also, this week, the New York-based conversational AI startup Amelia LLC said it had raised $175 million via BuildGroup and Monroe Capital, while Humane Inc., also based in New York and a partner of OpenAI, raised $100 million.
Anthropic’s latest funding round is a testament to the growing interest in generative AI startups. With its focus on AI safety and building more reliable and steerable systems, Anthropic is poised to make a significant impact in the field of conversational AI. With the new funding, the company will be able to accelerate its efforts to eliminate bias and make conversational AI more predictable. The funding round also highlights the growing number of investors who are interested in supporting generative AI startups, as the capabilities of ChatGPT and other large language models continue to prove useful in various applications.
