Artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic has soared to a $170bn valuation after raising one of the largest-ever venture capital funding rounds, underscoring investor appetite for the fast-growing sector, the Financial Times reported.
The San Francisco-based company, founded four years ago by former OpenAI employees, secured $13bn in new capital in a deal co-led by Iconiq Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, alongside Fidelity Management & Research Company. Sovereign wealth funds including Singapore’s GIC and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) also joined the round.
Anthropic was last valued at about $60bn in March but raised the size of its latest fundraising well above its original $5bn target, amid strong investor demand to back AI groups despite a slowdown in public tech stocks.
Chief financial officer Krishna Rao said the financing reflected “extraordinary confidence in our financial performance,” citing exponential growth in demand from customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to AI start-ups. Anthropic now counts more than 300,000 enterprise customers, nearly seven times more than a year ago, with each expected to contribute at least $100,000 in run-rate revenue.
The group said its run-rate revenue has surged to more than $5bn, up from $1bn at the start of the year, making it one of the fastest-growing tech companies in history.
The QIA’s participation marked Anthropic’s first direct fundraising from the Middle East, a shift in strategy after chief executive Dario Amodei previously resisted sovereign capital. In a message to staff earlier this year, Amodei acknowledged the company’s relentless capital needs, saying: “Unfortunately, I think ‘no bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on.”
Anthropic’s latest success highlights the scale of competition in AI. OpenAI is in talks to raise $40bn in what could be the largest-ever financing round for a tech start-up, led by SoftBank, while numerous AI application builders are securing billion-dollar valuations.
Anthropic launched its Claude chatbot in 2023, a direct rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, but has focused primarily on business users rather than consumers.
Despite its explosive growth, Anthropic — like its competitors — is burning cash heavily and expects to post losses for years as it invests in infrastructure and model development.
