Anthropic gets $100 Million more in Funding

SK Telecom, a telecommunications corporation based in South Korea

Hey Friends,

I am increasingly following Venture Capital trends around Generative A.I. and while Microsoft backing OpenAI is likely well over 80% of funding of LLM based startups in recent times, I’m glad to see Anthropic getting more than just Google behind them.

Anthropic’s $450 million Series C was already somewhat spectacular, given that startups are nearing a death spiral moment in innovation. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I saw the news today.

Anthropic, Cohere, Inflection, Stability A.I., Alepha Alpha and so many others are really growing their B2B and enterprise partnerships at a rapid clip.

Six more companies competing with OpenAI

Google has around a 10% stake in Anthropic as well as pedigree who used to work at Google. Google invested $300 million in the company, taking a 10% stake. Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup founded in 2021 by former OpenAI research execs, is taking full advantage of the market hype.

Prior to the latest investment, SKT participated in the Series C round through its venture capital arm, SK Telecom Venture Capital (SKTVC). Just last month, Germany-based software company SAP also invested in Anthropic. This diversification puts my mind at ease a bit. OpenAI being in bed with Microsoft really isn’t great for the planet. But if your business really thinks it has to have 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT Pro, that’s a lot of recurring revenue for Microsoft.

Anthropic is much more safety consciousness as a Generative A.I. brand as it makes me feel a lot more comfortable. Meanwhile it doesn’t even feel like Microsoft has adequate cybersecurity in place.