Anthropic Looks to Challenge OpenAI's Dominance as It Seeks $5 Billion in Funding

Anthropic, an AI research startup, aims to raise $5 billion over the next two years, as per company documents obtained by TechCrunch. The funds will be used to take on rival OpenAI and enter over a dozen major industries.

Anthropic plans to build a "frontier model" called Claude-Next, which is ten times more capable than today's most advanced AI.

Next-gen Algorithm for AI Self-teaching

The company estimates that this model will require on the order of 10^25 FLOPs, which is several orders of magnitude bigger than even the biggest current models.

Anthropic refers to Claude-Next as a "next-generation algorithm for AI self-teaching," which alludes to a method of AI instruction it created known as "constitutional AI."

By allowing systems to reply to queries and carry out activities using a minimal set of guiding principles, the method aims to bring AI into line with human intentions.

The frontier concept will be used by Anthropic to create virtual assistants that can automate a significant chunk of the economy. The top 2025/26 model-training companies, according to the company, will be too far ahead of everyone else to be caught in subsequent cycles.

The frontier model is the replacement for Claude, a chatbot developed by Anthropic that can be programmed to carry out a variety of tasks, such as document searching, summarizing, writing, and coding, as well as responding to inquiries on specific subjects.

Following a restricted beta at the end of last year, Anthropic debuted Claude commercially in March, giving early access to about 15 partners.

Competing with OpenAI

Anthropic is in competition with OpenAI as well as up-and-coming companies like Cohere and AI21 Labs that are creating and commercializing their own text- and image-generating AI systems.

Jack Clark, the former policy lead of OpenAI, as well as other former workers, joined Dario Amodei when he founded Anthropic in 2021 as a public benefit organization.

Anthropic anticipates that within the next few years, Alameda Research Ventures, a "silent investor" in the business, will sell its shares in the bankruptcy proceedings.

Google has invested $300 million in the company for a 10% stake, making it one of Anthropic's investors.

The Financial Times broke the news of the agreement, which stipulated that Anthropic would designate Google Cloud as its "preferred cloud provider" and that the two organizations would "co-developing AI computing.

A representative for Anthropic stated that the business is preparing to make other product announcements as soon as it can.