AI Startup Anthropic Close to Securing $5 Billion Valuation with New Funding Round

John Lopez, Tech Times 28 January 2023, 10:01 am

San Francisco-based Artificial Intelligence startup, Anthropic, is close to securing a funding round that could value the company at $5 billion, The New York Times reports.

The new funding, expected to reach $300 million, will build on the $704 million the company has already raised since its founding in 2021.

Since it was founded in 2021, Anthropic has researched how to make systems easier to control, more stable, and easier to understand.

On interpretability, it has progressed in mathematically reverse engineering the behavior of small language models. It has started to figure out where the pattern-matching behavior in large language models comes from.

"With this fundraise, we're going to explore the predictable scaling properties of machine learning systems, while closely examining the unpredictable ways in which capabilities and safety issues can emerge at scale," Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement.

Startup Backed by Bankman-Fried's FTX

The most recent round of funding talks is notable because of its early backers, a group of former OpenAI researchers, and the majority of funding coming from Sam Bankman-Fried and colleagues at FTX.

FTX, however, declared bankruptcy last year amid fraud allegations. This opens the possibility that funds could be reclaimed by a bankruptcy court, leaving Anthropic in gridlock.

The Trend in AI Tech

Silicon Valley is currently swallowed up in a rush over startups focused on "generative" AI, with investors and startups scrambling to make the best bets.

Even though funding for other startups has dried up, investors have been chasing deals in AI companies, with Microsoft recently investing $10 billion in OpenAI. Character.AI and Replika, both of which specialize in generative AI, are also in the works for funding.

Typically, venture capital investors do not back multiple companies in the same category, resulting in high stakes for these startups seeking to capitalize on the potential of generative AI technologies.

After more than a decade of research, generative AI technologies are poised to reshape online search engines, photo and graphics editors, and other applications.

The New AI Industry

As the public continues to test these AI technologies, businesses are watching for any warning signs. According to Forbes, companies generally follow one of two strategies when it comes to commercializing AI technology today.

One option is to move slowly, maybe starting with a small number of trials and pilots, while keeping an open mind about the organizational, ethical, moral, and social problems that are coming up because of the technology.

In Other News

Google has released new research that uses artificial intelligence to generate music of any genre. Compared to other AI music generators, MusicLM produces impressive variety and depth.

MusicLM offers a unique model and an extensive training database with 280,000 hours of music. Aside from the genres and instruments, the AI also writes tracks using abstract concepts that computers and past AIs can not do.