Anthropic, the AI powerhouse behind the Claude models, has made headlines with a massive $3.5 billion Series E funding round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. This investment triples the company's valuation to an impressive $61.5 billion, cementing its position as a top competitor to OpenAI.
The funding round saw participation from notable investors, including Salesorce Ventures, Cisco, Fidelity, and Jane Street. Anthropic plans to use the funds to expand computing resources for model development, enhance AI safety research, and accelerate its international expansion efforts.
This news comes just days after Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, its most advanced model yet, featuring hybrid reasoning capabilities. The company also introduced a Claude Code agentic coding tool, further solidifying its role in the AI landscape. Notably, Claude 3.7 Sonnet will power Alexa+, Amazon's upgraded voice assistant, following Amazon's earlier $8 billion investment in Anthropic.
Despite recent concerns in the AI sector, this funding round demonstrates that top AI startups continue to attract significant investments. Anthropic joins the ranks of the 'big four' AI players—OpenAI, Google, and xAI—as it pushes forward with innovation and growth.