On Wednesday, media reports citing informed sources revealed that Anthropic, the developer of the chatbot Claude, is planning to raise $100 billion based on a pre-money valuation of $3.5 trillion, nearly double its valuation from just four months ago.
Sources indicated that Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and Coatue Management are expected to lead this funding round. This marks the third "mega-funding" event for the company in the past year, following a $13 billion investment completed last September, which valued the company at $1.83 trillion at that time.
The current funding round is anticipated to be finalized within the coming weeks, although the ultimate scale of the transaction could still be subject to change.
One source mentioned that this new capital injection is separate from the planned investment of up to $15 billion by NVIDIA and Microsoft into this competitor of OpenAI. As part of that collaboration, Anthropic has stated it will procure $30 billion worth of computing power from Microsoft Azure, which will operate on NVIDIA's AI systems.
To date, Anthropic has raised hundreds of billions of dollars and is projected to go public later this year. Its existing investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Fidelity Management & Research, and Iconiq Capital.
Founded in 2021 by former Google researcher and ex-OpenAI member Dario Amodei alongside Daniela Amodei, the company is reportedly expected to achieve its first break-even point in 2028, a profitability timeline that is faster than that of OpenAI.
Concurrently, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is also engaged in discussions for a new round of financing. Reports suggest that OpenAI is aiming to raise up to $100 billion at a pre-investment valuation of $7.5 trillion.
