(Reuters) -AI startup Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal valuing the OpenAI rival at $60 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading the funding round, the report said. Anthropic was valued at around $18 billion in a fundraise led by Menlo Ventures in 2024.
Anthropic, known for its generative AI chatbot Claude, said it did not have a comment on the report when contacted by Reuters.
Amazon.com late last year doubled its investment in the startup to $8 billion, as the e-commerce giant went up against Big Tech rivals in a race to capitalize on GenAI technology.
Anthropic, co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, said in 2023 it had secured a $500 million investment from Alphabet, which promised to invest another $1.5 billion over time.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI triggered an AI arms race after it launched ChatGPT in November 2022. The growing popularity of the company and new product launches helped it close a $6.6 billion funding round in October, potentially taking its valuation to $157 billion.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Alan Barona)
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