OpenAI rival Anthropic raises $450 million in Series C funding led by Google

Leading AI startup Anthropic, maker of Claude, a rival chatbot to OpenAI's ChatGPT is swiftly capitalizing on the growing interest in AI as it raised $450 million in Series C funding, the largest AI funding round this year since Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI in January, according to PitchBook data.

The startup was founded in 2021 by OpenAI’s former vice president of research, Dario Amodei, and his sister Daniela Amodei, who was OpenAI’s vice president of safety and policy.

Google is among the lead investors in Anthropic’s latest funding round, alongside Salesforce Ventures, Zoom Ventures and Spark Capital. Before this recent round, Google had invested $300 million in the company, taking a 10% stake.

This is unsurprising as there has been an increase in venture investors pouring cash into companies with a compelling story in generative AI. Notably, Microsoft, Google and others have entered a race to embed new AI models into their core products.

The infusion of funds will provide crucial support for Anthropic's ongoing development of AI systems, with a specific emphasis on advancing Claude, its versatile generative AI assistant capable of performing a wide range of conversational and text-processing tasks.

While the exact valuation of Anthropic remains undisclosed, there have been conflicting reports. The Information reported a valuation of over $4.1 billion in March, while Reuters sources indicated a valuation close to $5 billion. This further emphasizes the significant market interest and potential of the company.