Anthropic, an AI startup founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers including siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, has secured a significant $3.5 billion in Series E funding. This latest investment round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with a $1 billion contribution, values the company at $61.5 billion post-money.
The funding attracted participation from several prominent investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. According to Crunchbase, this brings Anthropic’s total raised capital to $18.2 billion.
Business growth and financial situation
Anthropic has experienced remarkable commercial growth. The company reportedly reached an annual revenue run rate of around $1 billion last year, representing a tenfold increase year-over-year. This growth has accelerated further, with revenue increasing by 30% in just the first two months of 2025.
Despite this impressive revenue growth, Anthropic continues to operate at a loss as it invests heavily in research and development. According to The Information, the company told investors it expects to burn through $3 billion this year.
Strategic focus and recent developments
Anthropic stated it will use the new investment to advance its development of next-generation AI systems, expand its compute capacity, deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment, and accelerate its international expansion.
The funding announcement comes shortly after the launch of the company’s latest flagship AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, described as a “hybrid reasoning” model. Anthropic has positioned itself as a more research-focused and safety-oriented alternative to its chief rival, OpenAI.
In recent months, Anthropic has made several strategic moves:
- Released new tools including computer-using “agents”
- Launched a desktop client and mobile applications
- Opened offices in Europe
- Made high-profile hires including Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma, and ex-OpenAI safety researcher Jan Leike
Strategic partnerships
Anthropic has strengthened its relationship with Amazon, which has invested a total of $8 billion in the startup. This partnership makes AWS Anthropic’s “primary cloud and training partner” for deploying its largest AI models. Amazon and Anthropic are also collaborating to optimize Amazon’s custom AI chips, Trainium, for model training workloads. Additionally, Anthropic’s models power portions of Amazon’s upgraded Alexa virtual assistant experience, Alexa+.
Google has also committed more than $3 billion to the company, highlighting the strategic importance major tech companies place on advanced AI development.
While OpenAI has increasingly focused on consumer applications, Anthropic has positioned itself primarily as a B2B technology provider, enabling other companies to build with its models. This approach has attracted clients ranging from startups to global corporations including Zoom, Snowflake, and Pfizer.
Sources: TechCrunch, VentureBeat