While artificial intelligence startup OpenAI reportedly ended the year discussing a fundraise at a valuation of $100 billion or more, one of its leading challengers, Anthropic, was accepting a round of its own. Appearing almost modest in comparison, Anthropic was raising $750 million in new funding that would nearly quadruple its valuation to $18.4 billion. New details of the unusual round, which remains in progress, reveal how lead investor Menlo Ventures used an increasingly popular tactic to jump to the front: a special purpose vehicle, or SPV. The impetus to do the round, according to multiple sources, came from an opportunistic Menlo seeking to double down on a position in one of AI’s leading unicorns ahead of a potential larger round later in 2024, once Anthropic’s revenue had grown. For a previously small shareholder, it was a power play. For Anthropic, a painless way to burnish its war chest amid a hiring and product race. Anthropic hadn’t been planning to do a round at the end of 2023 at all: the startup had previously signaled to interested investors that it preferred to wait until the second half of 2024 to make a formal fundraising push, according to four people with knowledge of the process. But Menlo’s offer made sense: the company gained a cash infusion at a critical juncture with minimal fuss, while also formalizing terms for two others promised by key cloud computing partners, Amazon and Google. Some investors were caught off guard by Menlo’s aggressive move. “We complained to the company, but the company just has so much demand for the product,” said one existing investor. “And they apologized because they don’t have time.”
Full feature : Inside AI Unicorn Anthropic’s Unusual $750 Million Fundraise.
