The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthropic, the company that creates the AI chatbot Claude, is wrapping up a $3.5 billion fundraising round that values the business at $61.5 billion. According to the WSJ, investors have now agreed to a larger tranche, despite Anthropic’s stated goal of raising $2 billion.
The negotiations are underway for participation in the upcoming round by Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX. If it ends up reaching $3.5 billion, Anthropic will have raised almost $18 billion in all.
According to the WSJ, Anthropic recently achieved almost $1.2 billion in annualized revenue. This week, the company unveiled Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a new flagship AI model. However, it continues to lose money. The startup plans to use the money raised in its upcoming round to build more powerful AI systems.