Anthropic’s mega valuation mints seven new AI billionaires
The minting of seven new billionaires shows that the initial market shock of DeepSeek has not diminished unrelenting investor demand for US-based AI startups
ANTHROPIC’S latest funding round has made the OpenAI rival one of the most valuable startups in the world. It’s also turned its founders into billionaires.
The San Francisco-based firm on Monday (Mar 3) closed a deal led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to raise US$3.5 billion at a US$61.5 billion valuation. In a rare feat of wealth creation, that would give each of Anthropic’s seven co-founders a fortune of more than US$1.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Anthropic was created in 2021 by a team of former OpenAI employees, led by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei. The company, known for its chatbot Claude, has quickly emerged as one of the largest players in artificial intelligence (AI) with an annual revenue run rate of about US$1 billion late last year, Bloomberg has reported.
It plans to use the latest funding to develop its next generation of AI systems, expand its computing capacity, further its research efforts and accelerate its international expansion.
Bloomberg calculates each Anthropic founder owns at least a 2 per cent stake in the company following the funding round, after accounting for a typical employee stock pool. Anthropic declined to comment.
Outside of the Amodei siblings, Anthropic’s co-founders include Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Christopher Olah.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
The minting of seven new billionaires shows that the initial market shock of DeepSeek – a Chinese company whose lower-cost AI model rivals competitors such as Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT – has not diminished unrelenting investor demand for US-based AI startups.
Anthropic has attracted investments from major backers including Amazon.com, which contributed US$4 billion in November, and Alphabet’s Google, which bet US$1 billion in January. The company has now raised over US$17 billion, according to PitchBook.
OpenAI, meanwhile, is in talks to raise as much as US$40 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank Group that would give it a post-money valuation of US$300 billion, Bloomberg reported in January. Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with billionaire chief executive officer Sam Altman, opposes its plan to restructure as a for-profit business and offered to buy the company for US$97.4 billion. That offer was quickly rebuffed.
Musk’s own AI startup, xAI, is eyeing a US$10 billion raise at a US$75 billion valuation. The world’s richest man owns 53 per cent of the company, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. BLOOMBERG
Share with us your feedback on BT's products and services
