Anthropic Seeking $2 Billion Via Google After Amazon Pledge
Red-hot AI startup Anthropic is reportedly in talks to raise $2 billion in funding from Google and others, just days after Amazon committed to invest upwards of $4 billion in the startup.
Red-hot generative AI startup Anthropic is reportedly seeking to raise $2 billion in new funding with Google expected to be part of the investment, adding more fire to the blockbuster AI battle occurring between Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
The news comes just days after Google’s rival Amazon committed to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic as the startup pledged that AWS would be its primary provider for mission-critical workloads.
The Information was first to report that Anthropic is in talks to raise $2 billion in funding, which will include Google as well as other companies. The news outlet reports that Anthropic is looking for a valuation of between $20 billion to $30 billion, which includes the new investment.
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Earlier this year, Anthropic raised $450 million in a funding round which Google participated in, alongside Zoom Ventures and Salesforce Ventures.
Privately-held San Francisco-based Anthropic competes head-to-head with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is backed by Microsoft. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives and has been an AWS customer since its inception in 2021.
Amazon Invests $4 Billion In Anthropic
Just last week, Amazon pledged to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic with bold plans ranging from shaking up the chip industry to innovating alongside the startup. Amazon will own a minority position in Anthropic. Google purchased a roughly 10 percent stake in Anthropic last year.
“Anthropic will have access to very significant quantities of compute, which will have Trainium and Inferentia in them,” said AWS CEO Adam Selipsky last week. “So yes, that’s one of many reasons why we continue to ramp up and to provide a very robust AWS controlled supply chain for AI chips.”
Anthropic said it now plans to run the majority of its workloads on AWS. The startup is also providing AWS customers early access to unique features for model customization using their proprietary data and fine-tuning capabilities—all via Amazon Bedrock.
Anthropic Claude
Anthropic Claude is the company’s generative AI assistant and foundation model based on the company’s top-notch research into training AI systems. Claude is currently available in the U.S. and U.K.
In July, Anthropic launched Claude 2 with improved performance, longer responses and improved accessibility via API as well as a new public-facing website. Claude is designed to excel at a wide range of tasks, from sophisticated dialogue and creative content generation to complex reasoning and detailed instruction, while maintaining a high degree of reliability and predictability.
“We are excited to use AWS’s Trainium chips to develop future foundation models,” said Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, in a statement last week. “Since announcing our support of Amazon Bedrock in April, Claude has seen significant organic adoption from AWS customers. By significantly expanding our partnership, we can unlock new possibilities for organizations of all sizes, as they deploy Anthropic’s safe, state-of-the-art AI systems together with AWS’s leading cloud technology.”