Latest news with #AnnaTong
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Anthropic hits $3 billion in annualized revenue on business demand for AI
By Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence developer Anthropic is making about $3 billion in annualized revenue, according to two sources familiar with the matter, in an early validation of generative AI use in the business world. The milestone, which projects the company's current sales over the course of a year, is a significant jump from December 2024 when the metric was nearly $1 billion, the sources said. The figure crossed $2 billion around the end of March, and at May's end it hit $3 billion, one of the sources said. While consumers have embraced rival OpenAI's ChatGPT, a number of enterprises have limited their rollouts to experimentation, despite board-level interest in AI. Anthropic's revenue surge, largely from selling AI models as a service to other companies, is a data point showing how business demand is growing, one of the sources said. A key driver is code generation. The San Francisco-based startup, backed by Google parent Alphabet and is famous for AI that excels at computer programming. Products in the so-called codegen space have experienced major growth and adoption in recent months, often drawing on Anthropic's models. This demand is setting Anthropic apart among software-as-a-service vendors. Its single-quarter revenue increases would count Anthropic as the fastest-growing SaaS company that at least one venture capitalist has ever seen. "We've looked at the IPOs of over 200 public software companies, and this growth rate has never happened," said Meritech General Partner Alex Clayton, who is not an Anthropic investor and has no inside knowledge of its sales. He cautioned that these comparisons are not fully precise, since Anthropic also has consumer revenue via subscriptions to its Claude chatbot. Still, by contrast, publicly traded SaaS company Snowflake took six quarters to go from $1 billion to $2 billion in such run-rate revenue, Clayton said. Anthropic competitor OpenAI has projected it will end 2025 with more than $12 billion in total revenue, up from $3.7 billion last year, three people familiar with the matter said. This total revenue is different from an estimated annualized figure like Anthropic's. Reuters could not determine this metric for OpenAI. The two rivals appear to be establishing their own swim lanes. While both offer enterprise and consumer products, OpenAI is shaping up to be a consumer-oriented company, and the majority of its revenue comes from subscriptions to its ChatGPT chatbot, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told Bloomberg late last year. OpenAI has not reported enterprise-specific revenue but said in May that paying seats for its ChatGPT enterprise product have grown to 3 million, from 2 million in February, and that T-Mobile and Morgan Stanley are among its enterprise customers. In the consumer race, Anthropic's Claude has seen less adoption than OpenAI. Claude's traffic, a proxy for consumer interest, was about 2% of ChatGPT's in April, according to Web analytics firm Similarweb. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a team that departed OpenAI over differences in vision, closed a $3.5 billion fundraise earlier this year. That valued the company at $61.4 billion. OpenAI is currently valued at $300 billion. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Anthropic hits $3 billion in annualized revenue on business demand for AI
By Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence developer Anthropic is making about $3 billion in annualized revenue, according to two sources familiar with the matter, in an early validation of generative AI use in the business world. The milestone, which projects the company's current sales over the course of a year, is a significant jump from December 2024 when the metric was nearly $1 billion, the sources said. The figure crossed $2 billion around the end of March, and at May's end it hit $3 billion, one of the sources said. While consumers have embraced rival OpenAI's ChatGPT, a number of enterprises have limited their rollouts to experimentation, despite board-level interest in AI. Anthropic's revenue surge, largely from selling AI models as a service to other companies, is a data point showing how business demand is growing, one of the sources said. A key driver is code generation. The San Francisco-based startup, backed by Google parent Alphabet and is famous for AI that excels at computer programming. Products in the so-called codegen space have experienced major growth and adoption in recent months, often drawing on Anthropic's models. This demand is setting Anthropic apart among software-as-a-service vendors. Its single-quarter revenue increases would count Anthropic as the fastest-growing SaaS company that at least one venture capitalist has ever seen. "We've looked at the IPOs of over 200 public software companies, and this growth rate has never happened," said Meritech General Partner Alex Clayton, who is not an Anthropic investor and has no inside knowledge of its sales. He cautioned that these comparisons are not fully precise, since Anthropic also has consumer revenue via subscriptions to its Claude chatbot. Still, by contrast, publicly traded SaaS company Snowflake took six quarters to go from $1 billion to $2 billion in such run-rate revenue, Clayton said. Anthropic competitor OpenAI has projected it will end 2025 with more than $12 billion in total revenue, up from $3.7 billion last year, three people familiar with the matter said. This total revenue is different from an estimated annualized figure like Anthropic's. Reuters could not determine this metric for OpenAI. The two rivals appear to be establishing their own swim lanes. While both offer enterprise and consumer products, OpenAI is shaping up to be a consumer-oriented company, and the majority of its revenue comes from subscriptions to its ChatGPT chatbot, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told Bloomberg late last year. OpenAI has not reported enterprise-specific revenue but said in May that paying seats for its ChatGPT enterprise product have grown to 3 million, from 2 million in February, and that T-Mobile and Morgan Stanley are among its enterprise customers. In the consumer race, Anthropic's Claude has seen less adoption than OpenAI. Claude's traffic, a proxy for consumer interest, was about 2% of ChatGPT's in April, according to Web analytics firm Similarweb. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a team that departed OpenAI over differences in vision, closed a $3.5 billion fundraise earlier this year. That valued the company at $61.4 billion. OpenAI is currently valued at $300 billion. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Robots
Follow on Apple or Spotify. Listen on the Reuters app. There's a global race for robot supremacy. From Shanghai to Silicon Valley, companies are trying to develop humanoids that can take on physical work. China is emerging as a major player thanks to abundant government support. Host Carmel Crimmins talks to Brenda Goh, Reuters bureau chief in Shanghai, and Anna Tong, Reuters technology correspondent in San Francisco, about the drive for humanoid labor. Plus, how to train your robot. For information on our privacy and data protection practices visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement. You may also visit to opt out of targeted advertising. Further Listening Budget deficits Coffee Critical Minerals
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Databricks competitor Chalk raises $50 million series A
By Anna Tong SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence infrastructure startup Chalk said Wednesday it had raised a $50 million Series A funding round, valuing the company at $500 million. Felicis led the round. San Francisco-based Chalk helps enterprises get their proprietary data into AI and machine learning models quickly, enabling companies to use AI to make up-to-date decisions. The company says fintech firms like MoneyLion use Chalk to enable instant decision-making for fraud detection and loan approvals, while solar company Sunrun uses Chalk to figure out where to put solar panels on a roof. "The old school model would be for a company to process data in a batch process, but increasingly, companies want to make decisions in real-time," said Chalk CEO Marc Freed-Finnegan. The company is co-founded by Elliot Marx and Andy Moreland. Freed-Finnegan said Chalk competes with Databricks and Snowflake, data analytics platforms that help enterprises build and govern data and AI applications, but Chalk differentiates itself by enabling real-time data processing for AI. Such companies have benefited from the AI boom by selling more tools that help clients build and deploy AI applications using the growing volume of data they already store with the company. Late last year, Databricks secured a record-breaking $10 billion in funding, one of the largest VC funding rounds in history.
Time of India
21-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
OpenAI, Google, xAI battle for superstar AI talent, shelling out millions
By Anna Tong, Kenrick Cai SAN FRANCISCO: The contest in Silicon Valley to dominate artificial intelligence is playing out on a new court: superstar researchers. has always been a hallmark of the tech industry, since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, recruiting has escalated to professional athlete levels, a dozen people who have been involved in recruiting AI researchers told Reuters. "The AI labs approach hiring like a game of chess," said Ariel Herbert-Voss, CEO of cybersecurity startup RunSybil and a former OpenAI researcher who entered the talent fight after launching his own company. "They want to move as fast as possible, so they are willing to pay a lot for candidates with specialized and complementary expertise, much like the game pieces. They are like, do I have enough rooks? Enough knights?" Companies including OpenAI and Google , eager to get or stay ahead in the race to create the best AI models, court these so-called "ICs" - the individual contributors whose work can make or break companies. Noam Brown, one of the researchers behind OpenAI's recent AI breakthroughs in complex math and science reasoning, said when he explored job opportunities in 2023, he found himself being courted by tech's elite: lunch with Google founder Sergey Brin, poker at Sam Altman's, and a private jet visit from an eager investor. Elon Musk will also make calls to close candidates for xAI , his AI company, said two people who have spoken to him. Ultimately, Brown said, he chose OpenAI because OpenAI was willing to put resources - both people and compute - behind the work he was excited about. "It was actually financially not the best option that I had," he said, explaining that compensation is not the most important thing for many researchers. That hasn't stopped companies from throwing millions of dollars in bonuses and pay packages at star researchers, according to seven sources familiar with the matter. A few top OpenAI researchers who have indicated interest in joining former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever's new company, SSI, were offered retention bonuses of $2 million, in addition to equity increases of $20 million or more, if they stayed, two sources told Reuters. Some have only been required to stay for a year in order to get the entire to comment. Other OpenAI researchers who have fielded offers from Eleven Labs have received bonuses of at least $1 million to stay at OpenAI, two sources told Reuters. Google DeepMind has offered top researchers $20 million per year compensation packages, awarded off-cycle equity grants specifically to AI researchers, and has also reduced vesting on some stock packages to 3 years, instead of the normal 4 years, sources said. In contrast, top engineers at big tech companies receive an average yearly compensation of $281,000 in salary and $261,000 in equity, according to a company that tracks tech industry compensation. 10,000x TALENT While talent has always been important in Silicon Valley, the difference with the AI boom is how few people are in this elite group - depending on who you ask, the number could range from a few dozen to around a thousand, eight sources told Reuters. That is based on the belief that this very small number of 'ICs' have made outsized contributions to the development of large language models, the technology today's AI boom is based on, and therefore could make or break the success of an AI model. "sure 10x engineers are cool but damn those 10,000x engineer/researchers...," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted in late 2023, alluding to a long held maxim that the best software engineers were 10 times as good as the average (10x), but now in the AI industry, the best researchers are 10,000 times (10,000x) as effective as the average. The of OpenAI's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, who then founded a rival AI startup, has intensified the AI talent war. Murati, who was known at OpenAI for her management skills and execution prowess, recruited 20 OpenAI employees before announcing her company in February. She has now lured even more researchers from OpenAI and other labs, and the team is now around 60 people, two sources told Reuters. Though the company has no product in the market, Murati is in the middle of closing a record-breaking seed round that is, based on the team's strength. A representative for Murati declined to comment. The scarcity of talent has forced companies to approach hiring creatively. Zeki Data, a data firm focused on identifying top AI talent, said it is employing sports industry data analysis techniques like the one popularized by the movie "Moneyball" to identify promising but undiscovered talent. For instance, Zeki Data discovered Anthropic has been hiring researchers with theoretical physics backgrounds, and other AI companies have hired individuals with quantum computing backgrounds. Anthropic did not reply to a request for comment. "On my team, I have extraordinarily talented mathematicians who wouldn't have come to this field if it weren't for the fast progress that we're seeing now," said Sebastien Bubeck, who left his role as vice president of GenAI research at Microsoft last year to join OpenAI. "We're seeing an influx of talent from all fields going into AI now. And some of these people are very, very clever, and they make a difference."
