Artificial intelligence company Anthropic on X announced that it has raised $30 billion in fresh funding at a $380 billion post-money valuation, underscoring its rapid ascent in the global AI race, thus triggering a response from Elon Musk.
“We’ve raised $30B in funding at a $380B post-money valuation. This investment will help us deepen our research, continue to innovate in products, and ensure we have the resources to power our infrastructure expansion as we make Claude available everywhere our customers are," the company posted.
Soon after, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk responded to Anthropic’s announcement on X.
“Your AI hates Whites & Asians, especially Chinese, heterosexuals and men. This is misanthropic and evil. Fix it," Musk wrote.
He further added, “Frankly, I don’t think there is anything you can do to escape the inevitable irony of Anthropic ending up being Misanthropic. You were doomed to this fate when you chose your name."
Musk also wrote: “The Name of the Wind."
His remarks come at a time when his own artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is undergoing significant changes.
According to a Reuters report, Musk has overhauled xAI’s management structure ahead of a planned initial public offering, following its merger with SpaceX.
The reorganisation came after the departure of several co-founders from the three-year-old firm.
At an all-hands meeting, Musk said, “We’re organising because we’ve reached a certain scale. We’re organising the company to be more effective at this scale. Now, naturally, when this happens, some people are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages."
He also highlighted the company’s ambitions in the competitive AI space, saying, “We are hiring, and we’re looking for intelligent and smart people. This is not an easy place to work. It’s a grind, but we have, I guess, like interstellar ambitions."
Anthropic is the maker of chatbot Claude and is widely seen as one of the leading challengers to OpenAI and other generative AI firms developing large language models for enterprise and consumer use.
AMONG TOP PRIVATE AI FIRMS
According to an Associated Press report, Anthropic’s $380 billion valuation places it among the world’s most valuable startups, alongside OpenAI and SpaceX.
Renaissance Capital has ranked Anthropic as the third most valuable private firm, behind OpenAI, valued at $500 billion, and SpaceX, which recently merged with Elon Musk’s AI venture.
The latest funding round was led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and US-based investment firm Coatue, along with dozens of other major investors.
AP reported that the funding includes a portion of the $15 billion investment previously announced by Nvidia and Microsoft.
As part of that arrangement, Anthropic is expected to buy up to $30 billion in computing capacity from Microsoft to build and run AI systems like Claude.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, is not yet profitable but has said it is on track for $14 billion in sales over the next year.
The company has focused on developing enterprise-grade AI tools, particularly for software engineering tasks, and has emphasised AI safety in its long-term plans.
Reuters also noted that traffic to xAI’s Grok chatbot remains significantly lower than rivals, accounting for about 3.4 per cent of global generative AI chatbot traffic, compared with 64.5 per cent for ChatGPT and 21.5 per cent for Google’s Gemini, according to January data from Similarweb.
