Anthropic in talks to raise $10 billion at about $350 billion valuation

Anthropic, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence start-up that makes the Claude chatbot, plans to raise $10 billion in funding that would value it at roughly $350 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Talks over the financing are said to be led by Coatue Management, GIC and other shareholders, and come amid speculation that Anthropic may pursue an initial public offering in the next 12 to 18 months as rivals add capital. The discussions are ongoing and the plans could change; Anthropic declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on the talks.

The company’s September funding round valued it at $183 billion. Anthropic has previously raised large sums from investors including Amazon and Google, and at the end of the year Microsoft and Nvidia said they would invest roughly $15 billion. Observers have pointed to an investment frenzy around A.I., which has raised concerns about a bubble and highlighted how costly it is to develop chatbots and other A.I. products.

Anthropic has said it is spending tens of billions on data center hardware and on purchasing computing power from Google and Amazon. The company also announced plans last year for $50 billion in data center spending alongside a cloud partner but did not specify how it would fund that project. The financing discussions described in reports remain underway and could yet change.

Key Topics

Tech, Anthropic, Claude Chatbot, Coatue Management, Gic, Amazon