Anthropic is negotiating a $5 billion round at a $170 billion valuation

Anthropic, one of the largest developers of language models, is in talks to raise a new round of funding worth between $3 billion and $5 billion. According to Bloomberg, the deal could raise the startup’s valuation to $170 billion.

Iconiq Capital is the lead investor, but Qatar Investment Authority and Singaporean fund GIC are also involved in the negotiations. Upon completion of the deal, Anthropic’s capitalization will almost triple compared to March, when the company was valued at $61.5 billion after raising $3.5 billion from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

In the last round, investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. The new round reflects Anthropic’s growing need for capital to develop increasingly large-scale AI models.

Nevertheless, the negotiations have been accompanied by internal disputes. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei admitted in a memo cited by Wired that he was not happy about having to raise money from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. “The principle of ‘No villain should profit from our success’ is pretty hard to do business with,” he wrote.

The company notes that the development of advanced AI models requires resources that far exceed traditional venture capital funding. According to Bloomberg’s sources, this is what forces Anthropic to turn to state investors.