AI company Anthropic is close to securing a major funding round that would more than triple its value and make it one of America's most valuable startups.
According to sources who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic is finalizing a $2 billion investment round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. If completed, the deal would value the company at $60 billion - a dramatic jump from its $18 billion valuation during last year's Menlo Ventures-led funding round.
Like most AI companies, Anthropic's actual business lags behind its astronomical valuation. Sources say the company expects around $875 million in revenue over the next year, mostly from enterprise customers. At $60 billion, that's quite a multiple - but it would still make Anthropic America's fifth most valuable startup, trailing only SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks, according to data from CB Insights.
For context, Elon Musk's xAI recently matched OpenAI's massive $6 billion raise at a $157 billion valuation. The AI funding race shows no signs of slowing.
Growing partnerships and market share
Amazon recently strengthened its ties with Anthropic, doubling its investment to a total of $8 billion. The tech giant is using the partnership to promote its AWS cloud services for AI training, specifically its custom Trainium and Inferentia chips. It's also bolstering its cloud business, as some of that money will go back into AWS's cloud infrastructure when Anthropic trains its models.
Anthropic has reportedly been quietly eating into OpenAI's market share. According to Menlo Ventures' data, Anthropic has doubled its share of AI-assisted software development from 12% to 24%, while OpenAI's dominance has slipped from 50% to 34%.
The company has also partnered with Palantir to develop AI models for defense applications. Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic currently focuses solely on text models rather than offering image, video, or audio capabilities.
