The raise, if materialised, is set to become one of the largest funding rounds for an AI start-up.
Anthropic is nearing a deal to raise up to $10bn in a new funding round, according to Bloomberg, doubling what the company was previously reportedly set to raise.
The raise, if materialised, will be one of the largest funding rounds for an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, only behind the likes of its rival OpenAI, which raised $40bn in a single round and xAI, which raised $10bn earlier this year.
According to reports, investment firm Iconiq Capital is leading the round. Other participants include TPG, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Menlo Ventures. Anthropic has also held discussions with a number of large Middle Eastern investors, including the United Arab Emirates state investment fund MGX, about joining the round.
Sources told Bloomberg that the final amount remains undecided, however, strong investor demand has led the funding target to increase from the $5bn Anthropic was gearing to raise earlier this year.
That raise alone would have nearly tripled the AI company’s value in months, ranking it among the most valuable private technology companies in the world, including OpenAI, valued at $300bn, the Chinese TikTok-owner ByteDance at $312bn and SpaceX, which stands at about $400bn.
Anthropic had also just raised $3.5bn in a Series E funding round in March, taking the four-year-old start-up to a $61.5bn post-raise valuation.
That round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and saw participation from several big name investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, Fidelity Management and Research Company and General Catalyst.
The start-up has also seen massive support from Google, which reportedly pumped more than $1bn into the start-up, as well as Amazon, which invested $8bn into Anthropic over the years.
A month after the March raise, Anthropic announced plans to create more than 100 new jobs across its European offices, primarily hiring in Dublin and London.
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Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. Image: Stuart Isett/Fortune via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
