Artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic has reportedly fetched a $61.5 billion valuation in its latest funding round.
According to CNBC, Anthropic on Monday closed the $3.5 billion round, which had been led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Salesforce Ventures, Cisco Investments, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, D1 Capital Partners and Jane Street were among others said to have been involved.
Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI research executives, had been valued at US$18 billion just last year.
The latest funding means Anthropic has secured its spot among the world’s most valuable start-ups, with Google and Amazon among those to have backed the firm previously.
Funds would go toward development of its next-generation AI, a CNBC-cited statement said.
This included to “expand its compute capacity, deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment, and accelerate its international expansion in Asia and Europe”.