Anthropic, an AI startup created by former OpenAI employees, has pooled together US$450mln in its latest round of fundraising.
Backing came from companies including Google, Salesforce and Zoom Video, with the financing led by venture capital firm Spark Capital.
The valuation of the AI developer was not disclosed, although earlier this year Google revealed it pumped US$300mln into the firm in return for a 10% stake.
A US$30bln price tag was given to OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, when Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) began investing billions of dollars into the firm earlier this year.
ChatGPT’s meteoric launch into the mainstream last November sparked a flurry of investment in the industry, with a whole host of chatbot alternatives being released including Google’s own version Bard.
Anthropic was set up in 2021 as a breakaway from OpenAI, after workers at the ChatGPT creator felt safety concerns were being overlooked in the development of AI.
The staff splitting from OpenAI was driven by Microsoft investing US$1bln in the machine learning company back in 2019, according to reports from the Financial Times.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive and former head of AI safety at OpenAI, claimed that the latest round of investment would help his company research and develop technology while keeping “safety at the frontier”.
“Our team is focused on AI alignment techniques that allow AI systems to better handle adversarial conversations, follow precise instructions, and generally be more transparent about their behaviours and limitations,” said Anthropic.