AI company Anthropic has secured $3.5 billion in new funding at a $61.5 billion valuation, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Berber Jin. The company behind the Claude chatbot initially sought $2 billion but increased the amount during investor talks. The funding round includes participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Bessemer Venture Partners, with Abu Dhabi’s MGX potentially joining. The company currently generates about $1.2 billion in annualized revenue but remains unprofitable. Anthropic plans to use the new capital to develop more powerful AI models. The successful funding round demonstrates continued investor confidence in proprietary AI model development, despite recent competition from Chinese company DeepSeek.