Anthropic's $5B, 4-year plan to take on OpenAI

AI research startup Anthropic aims to raise as much as $5 billion over the next two years to take on rival OpenAI and enter over a dozen major industries, according to company documents obtained by TechCrunch. A pitch deck for Anthropic's Series C fundraising round discloses these and other long-term goals for the company, which was founded in 2020 by former OpenAI researchers. In the deck, Anthropic says that it plans to build a "frontier model" -- tentatively called "Claude-Next" -- 10 times more capable than today's most powerful AI, but that this will require a billion dollars in spending over the next 18 months. When contacted for comment, an Anthropic spokesperson said: "We are planning additional product announcements and will be talking about them soon." The Information reported in early March that Anthropic was seeking to raise $300 million at $4.1 billion valuation, bringing its total raised to $1.3 billion.