The investment group, Iconiq Capital, is about to lead a $5 billion round of financing for the artificial intelligence start-up company, Anthropic, which, if completed, would bring the company ‘ s valuation to $170 billion, almost three times its estimate four months ago. According to two sources, Iconiq Capital had submitted the terms of its proposal to Anthropic. The deal will make the only four-year start-up company one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.
Iconiq Capital, an investment group based in San Francisco, manages the finances of a number of well-known technology billionaires, whose clients include the co-founders of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, and the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
Founded in 2011, the group initially provided wealth advisers to super-rich people and currently manages over $80 billion in assets. According to the British Financial Times, in recent weeks Anthropic has been discussing a new round of investment with a number of investors, including the Emirates National Investment Fund MGX and its current partner, Amazon.
In March this year, the start-up company completed $3.5 billion in financing with a $61.5 billion valuation. The annual recurrent income of Anthropic has increased fourfold since this year, to about $4 billion. The group is taking advantage of the strong investor interest in fast-track artificial intelligence start-ups. This round of financing comes at a time of intense competition for funds, when artificial intelligence companies are looking at sovereign wealth funds outside Silicon Valley.
The $170 billion valuation will make Anthropic one of the world ‘ s most valuable private science and technology companies, after its competitors OpenAI (valued at $300 billion) and SpaceX (valued at $400 billion).
Artificial intelligence start-ups and large science and technology groups are in fierce competition and cutting-edge tools have been developed and sold to individuals and businesses. This will require a huge investment to provide credit and training for the next generation of large language models.
Anthropic was created in 2021 by senior staff of OpenAI, who left after a conflict with the co-founder Sam Altman over the direction of the company. Iconiq’s client, Moscow Witz, was one of the first sponsors of the separated company. Zuckerberg, also an important client of Iconiq, is also restructuring Meta’s strategy to better counterbalance with competitors in artificial intelligence such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
Anthropic has consistently demonstrated his commitment to the safe, responsible and ethical development of artificial intelligence tools, after refusing to raise funds directly from the Middle East region. But last week, CEO Dario Amodei of Anthropic wrote to his employees to inform them that their company was changing its strategy and would begin to accept investment from the Middle East.
Amodé warned that this might “be profitable to dictators”, but added: “Unfortunately, I think that `never let bad people benefit from our success’ is a principle that is quite difficult to operate on this basis.”
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