From leaving OpenAI to becoming a favorite of capital: Anthropic plans to raise $10 billion in financing.

On August 23rd, according to foreign media reports, AI startup Anthropic is in talks for a financing round of up to $10 billion, twice the previous target. This funding is expected to value Anthropic at $170 billion, a significant jump from the $58 billion valuation in the financing at the beginning of this year.

According to people familiar with the matter, venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners first approached Anthropic at the beginning of this year, initiating an initial financing plan of $2 billion. Subsequently, as more investors joined, the financing amount gradually climbed. Anthropic originally planned to raise $5 billion, but due to the high enthusiasm of investors, the financing scale has expanded to $10 billion.

The funds raised by Anthropic will be mainly used for data center construction, procurement of high - performance computing hardware, recruitment of top engineers, and global market expansion. In the Asia - Pacific and Middle East regions, Anthropic is seeking cooperation with sovereign wealth funds to support its international strategy.

It is reported that Anthropic completed the first round of subscriptions last week and is expected to finalize all transactions by the end of this month. This financing round has attracted many well - known venture capital firms, including Silicon Valley wealth management giant Iconiq Capital, as well as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and MGX from Abu Dhabi. In addition, sovereign wealth funds such as the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) are also in talks to join, highlighting Anthropic's appeal in the global capital market.

In fact, Anthropic's huge financing is not an isolated case. Since the beginning of this year, financing activities in the AI field have been frequent. xAI under Elon Musk is discussing raising $10 billion, while OpenAI is seeking up to $40 billion in financing. Large - scale financing and high valuations have almost become the norm in the industry.

From Startup to Industry Leader

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei, former researchers at OpenAI, with the goal of developing safe and reliable AI systems. Its core product, Claude, has grown into one of the main competitors to ChatGPT in just a few years.

At the beginning of this year, Anthropic was valued at $61.5 billion after a $3.5 billion financing round led by Lightspeed. So far, the company has raised a total of $14.3 billion through 12 financing rounds.

In June this year, Anthropic launched a series of upgrades including Claude Sonnet 3.5, Sonnet 3.7, Sonnet 4, Opus 4, and Claude Code in one go, strengthening its competitiveness in the enterprise market. On August 12th, the company also announced that it would expand Claude's prompt window to 1 million tokens, equivalent to 750,000 Chinese characters or more than 75,000 lines of code, enabling it to handle complete code libraries or large - scale research papers and providing new possibilities for enterprise users.

On the same day, Anthropic announced that it would provide one - year Claude services to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the United States for a symbolic price of $1. This move not only demonstrates the company's emphasis on AI applications in the public sector but also adds an edge in its competition with OpenAI.

Industry Competition and Challenges

Anthropic's rise coincides with the intensifying competition in the AI industry. Companies like OpenAI and xAI are also accelerating infrastructure and talent deployment through large - scale financing. It is reported that current and former employees of OpenAI are planning to sell nearly $6 billion worth of company shares to investment institutions including SoftBank Group, Thrive Capital, and Dragoneer Investment Group, with Thrive Capital expected to lead this transaction. If this deal is reached, OpenAI's valuation will jump from the current $300 billion to $500 billion. In addition, xAI is also seeking financing at a valuation of $200 billion.

Meanwhile, the industry's concern about AI security is constantly increasing. Anthropic takes "safety first" as its core concept and continues to invest in research on mechanism interpretability and alignment.

However, industry expansion also comes with challenges. Meta recently suspended AI - related recruitment, despite previously offering a $100 million signing bonus for AI talent, indicating the trade - off between high - speed investment and cost control for enterprises. Regulatory authorities are increasingly concerned about the potential risks of AI, and future policy uncertainties may pose constraints on industry development.

Driven by capital, the landscape of the AI industry is evolving rapidly. The competition among leading companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI will push the technological boundaries forward, but may also intensify market concentration. Enterprise customers and investors need to find a balance between technological innovation, practical application, and risk management.

This article is from "Tencent Technology", author: Wuji. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.