AI startup Anthropic has secured $450 million in Series C funding from a number of venture capital firms and tech companies. Spark Capital, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures, Zoom Ventures, and several other firms all threw their support behind the San Francisco-based AI rival to OpenAI.
This new influx of capital will result in further progress for the company’s product offerings, aiding the development and scaling of their AI assistant named Claude. They are also hoping to further their research into safe and ethical AI systems.
What makes Anthropic stand out is their commitment to safety when it comes to their AI systems. Unlike other chatbot applications, Claude is designed to be helpful and reliable while also easily being steered to carry out tasks that reduce potential risks from their AI technology. They also make sure that the capabilities and safety precautions are accessible to users in the form of an API and a chat interface.
Their early adoption of Claude had been well-received by partners such as Notion, Quora, and DuckDuckGo in the alpha testing phase. As for the future of Claude’s development, they have plans to further improve it with 100K context windows – allowing users to submit loads of data for analysis.
The Series C round of funding has also resulted in the expansion of the company’s board of directors. General Partner Yasmin Razavi from Spark Capital has joined the Board and had this to say regarding their mission to create reliable and honest AI systems: “We are delighted to partner with Anthropic’s mission of building ethical AI systems that can safely benefit the industry and consumers.”
Although it seemed like Anthropic is on a good path to success, they may be clouded by some controversy. Their biggest investor was at one point involved with FTX cryptocurrency exchange that failed after allegations of fraud and misappropriation. Sam Bank-Friedman, the founder of FTX and Alameda Research, is now facing criminal charges. It is unclear how these charges will affect the $500 million investment in Anthropic as Alymeda Research entered a bankruptcy case.
In spite of such incidents, Anthropic has managed to gather support from Google, Salesforce, Zoom, and other prominent tech companies. An Anthropic spokesperson remained optimistic and said “We couldn’t be more happy with our strong momentum, which is recognized by our investors with this significant funding round.”
