On the back of the successful launch of genAI platform Claude 3.7; four-year-old artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has raised $3.5 billion in a new funding round that triples its valuation to $61.5 billion.
The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, which invested $1 billion into Anthropic. Other investors include Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures.
It’s reported that the round was several times oversubscribed, which suggests investors remain bullish on heavily loss-making AI startups, despite fears that rivals like DeepSeek are closing the gap with cheaper models and that sophisticated AI technology.
Next Stop, World Domination?
Anthropic plans to use the substantial funding for computing resources to develop new models, as well as for international expansion in Asia and Europe. This comes at a time when the company is positioning itself to compete directly with bigger industry leaders like OpenAI.
Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer, outlined Anthropic’s lofty ambitions:
This investment fuels our development of more intelligent and capable AI systems that expand what humans can achieve, while deepening our understanding of how these systems work.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees, and has since differentiated itself by emphasising model safety, and the creativity and quality of the contet its genAI models can generate.
Its “Claude” models are among the most capable in the world, rivaling OpenAI’s GPT series, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama in independent evaluations, and outperforming them in some areas, such as coding.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s Innovative Approach
Anthropic’s newest AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, takes a unique approach compared to competitors. Rather than simply joining the race for ever-larger models, Anthropic has built a system that adapts to solve real-world business problems with practical applications across multiple industries.
The model breaks from the binary pattern of AI reasoning with a customisable feature that lets ‘Pro’ subscribers fine-tune exactly how long Claude ponders a question. This ranges from rapid responses to deep analysis, which uses all 128,000 available tokens.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s performance metrics are notably strong against its competitors.
In graduate-level reasoning (GPQA Diamond), Claude scores 84.8% with extended thinking, outperforming OpenAI’s models. In instruction-following (IFEval), it scores 93.2%—well above competitors like DeepSeek R1’s 83.3%. For software development, its benchmark scores in agentic coding (70.3%) substantially outperform OpenAI’s offerings.
While OpenAI appears to be using GPT-4.5 as a stepping stone toward GPT-5 later this year, Anthropic’s focused approach on reasoning capabilities and practical enterprise applications may be better positioned to deliver immediate value at a more reasonable cost structure.
The Heavyweights in Anthropic’s Corner
Anthropic is backed by Big Tech groups Amazon and Google, both of which have committed billions of dollars to the start-up. This support from established technology giants provides both financial resources and strategic partnerships that could help Anthropic scale its technologies more effectively.
The company has also focused heavily on safety measures, conducting extensive testing and evaluation of Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
Anthropic has worked with external experts to ensure it meets standards for safety, security, and reliability – a focus that could become increasingly valuable as organisations integrate AI deeper into critical business operations.
The Broader AI Investment Landscape
The pace of AI investment has become increasingly frenzied over the past two years, since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. OpenAI is reportedly in the process of raising $40 billion from SoftBank and other investors, while Elon Musk’s xAI raised more than $10 billion last year.
Safe Superintelligence, a company launched last year by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, is reportedly in talks to raise capital at a valuation of $30 billion or more, despite not yet announcing a product.
Anthropic initially sought to raise about $2 billion, but ultimately raised $3.5 billion at the $61.5 billion valuation.
Ravi Mhatre, a Lightspeed partner and co-founder was optimistic about the both Anthropic and the future of the industry:
We’re extremely excited by the consistent exponential growth in AI…[Anthropic] understands intelligence as a product, recognising that enterprise success will be a critical factor for delivering ongoing resources and proving grounds for transformative AI development.
