Anthropic in Talks with Menlo Ventures to Raise $750M 

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Another influx of cash might be on the horizon for Anthropic. The OpenAI competitor is hoping to raise $750 million in a new round of funding, according to Bloomberg and originally reported by The Information. The AI startup is in advanced talks to secure this investment, led by Silicon Valley's Menlo Ventures, and the potential round could raise the company's valuation to an estimated $18.4 billion. However, this deal is not yet finalized and remains confidential, as sources close to the matter reveal.

Founded in 2021 by former members of OpenAI, Anthropic is the creator of Claude, an advanced conversational AI chatbot with a strong focus on safety and ethical considerations.

This is only the most recent chapter in Anthropic’s funding saga. The company commenced with a $124 million Series A in May 2021, followed by a $580 million Series B in April 2022. March saw a strategic investment of $300 million from Google, valuing Anthropic at $4.1 billion. The upward trajectory continued with a $450 million Series C in May 2023, led by Spark Capital. Sapphire Ventures LLC pledged over $1 billion in June, and in August, South Korean telecommunications giant SK Telecom invested $100 million.

The year culminated with significant commitments from major tech players. Amazon announced in September that it will invest up to $4 billion and have a minority ownership position in the company. Google quickly followed suit in October with its own pledge of up to $2 billion.

Prior to this development, Anthropic was last in the news in November with the release of Claude 2.1. The latest iteration of the chatbot features a massive 200K token context window, significant reductions in rates of model hallucination, and a new tool use beta feature.

Earlier in the year, Anthropic finalized a major agreement with Google for cloud computing which, among other aspects, involves Anthropic utilizing Google’s numerous cloud services over an extended timeline. Furthermore, Anthropic has a similar arrangement with Amazon tied to the investment announcement, wherein the AI startup will tap into Amazon AWS’s cloud services and technology.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Datanami.