The latest round brings Anthropic's total funding to nearly
$1 billion, making it one of the most well-funded AI startups. The company did
not disclose its valuation, but sources put it at nearly $5 billion.
Foundation models are the next wave in AI, trained on a vast
quantity of data that can be used for different tasks with minimal fine-tuning,
instead of being task-specific.
Fundraising for AI remains a bright spot for startups, which
have seen investments slow down. In the first quarter, generative AI companies
raised over $1.7 billion (roughly Rs. 14,100 crore) across 46 deals, PitchBook
data showed.
Foundation model startups such as OpenAI, Anthropic and
Cohere have been racing to raise funding for the expensive development of large
models which consume a huge amount of computing power.
Interest in AI has grown after Anthropic's rival OpenAI
launched ChatGPT last year and raised $10 billion (roughly Rs. 82,700 crore)
from its strategic backer Microsoft, but regulators are concerned about the
potential use of the technology to spread misinformation.
Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives, said its AI
systems are safe because they would not tell users how to build a weapon or use
racially biased language. Its Claude models are seen as major competitors to
OpenAI's GPT-4 as enterprises host events to test models.
Zoom Video Communications, an investor in the round, said
last week it would integrate the startup's models into its video-conferencing
platform.
"We believe there will be two big winners and Anthropic
has the best research team," said Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures,
another investor. "We validated the interest from major strategics who
have big plans to integrate Anthropic into their applications."
Other investors in the round include Salesforce and Sound
Ventures. Google, which is developing its own foundation model, returns after
participating in Anthropic's last round.
Yasmin Razavi, a general partner at Spark Capital, has
joined Anthropic's board of directors. © Reuters