7GC II Invests in Anthropic, a Generative Artificial Intelligence Leader
We are proud to announce that 7GC invested in one of the emerging leaders of Generative AI, Anthropic, bringing a total of 5 investments in Fund II to date.
Founded in 2021, Anthropic is renowned for its advanced large language model called Claude, a rival of ChatGPT. The company was founded by former OpenAI executives and stands out in the LLM space for developing an enterprise only product, its large scale partnership with Amazon/AWS and a commitment to developing AI responsibly and ethically.
Since founding, Anthropic swiftly emerged as a significant player within the foundation model layer, securing strategic partnerships and investments with Amazon through AWS, Google Cloud and Salesforce. Despite only releasing a commercial product in March 2023, the company has added hundreds of customers including Zoom, Gitlab, Slack, Bridgewater, and SK Telecom.
Earlier this month, Amazon poured another $2.75bn into the company adding up to $4bn of funding to date. Last month, Claude 3 also ranked amongst the most powerful Chatbot surpassing OpenAI's Chat GPT as outlined here by CNBC. Its new chatbot has the ability to summarize about 150,000 words, or a lenghty bo ok, compared to ChatGPT ability to summarize about 3000. Anthropic is also allowing image and document uploads for the first time.
Despite the word generative AI being on the tip of everyone’s tongue, Gen AI spend represented only <1% of total cloud spend in 2023, representing $2.5B compared to $400B in cloud software spend. This sets an incredibly strong precursor for growth for Anthropic and other leaders in the LLM space today.
We’re excited to eagerly watch what’s next as a partner to Anthropic.
