AI news

 

July 2, 26: Anthropic's valuation reaches $380B after raising more cash. The maker of the Claude family of artificial intelligence models raised $30B in a Series G funding round at a $380B valuation.

The round was co-led by D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, and MGX, Anthropic said in a statement. It also includes several asset managers, hedge funds, and venture capital firms, as well as some of the previous money that came from Microsoft (MSFT) and Nvidia (NVDA).

June 15, 26: According to various reports, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns with senior Trump administration officials about possible security risks in Anthropic’s most advanced AI models. The discussions reportedly helped lead to a U.S. government order restricting foreign access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.

Anthropic said in response that it disabled both models for all users globally to comply with the order. The company said the directive applied to “any foreign national,” including foreign nationals inside the U.S. and foreign-born Anthropic employees.

Amazon’s involvement makes the story more complicated. The company is a major Anthropic investor, a key cloud partner, and a distributor of Anthropic models through AWS. Amazon did not confirm the details of its talks with government officials but said it is common for governments to seek its view on security risks.

• May 28, 26: Dell Technologies (DELL): Dell’s servers designed to run AI workloads are attracting customers from companies that rent computing power like CoreWeave Inc. and Nscale Global Holdings Ltd., as well as corporate clients and major AI providers. The company booked $24.4 billion in AI orders and generated $16.1 billion in AI server sales in the quarter ended May 1, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in the statement. “The AI opportunity shows no signs of slowing.”
• Oct 5, 24: Masayoshi Son, an artificial intelligence evangelist, thinks the technology will soon run households. AI darling Nvidia expanded a partnership with technology consultant Accenture as part of an effort to drive adoption of AI within businesses. OpenAI, for its part, completed a deal to raise $6.6 billion in new funding, making the firm one of the three largest venture-backed startups, alongside SpaceX and TikTok owner ByteDance. 
• Sep 25, 23: Amazon to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, a rival to ChatGPT developer OpenAI. 

The two firms said that they are forming a strategic collaboration to advance generative AI, with the startup selecting Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider. Anthropic will also use custom AWS-designed semiconductors to train the foundational models that underpin its AI applications. 
Anthropic was founded roughly two years ago by former OpenAI research executives and recently debuted its new AI chatbot called Claude 2.  Anthropic already counts some high-profile backers, including Google and Salesforce Ventures.