Frenzy for sure is the word to use. Now, Anthropic is the other generative AI darling.

It was founded by former open AI employees who wanted to build a safer AI startup.

They have also raised a ton of money at eye-popping valuations, but it differs

from Open AI in that Anthropic is backed not just by one mega cap like at Microsoft, but

several including Amazon and Google, sometimes within the span of just a few weeks.

Now a source with direct knowledge tells me that Anthropic is looking to raise again, this time

750 million dollars led by Menlo Ventures, a round that would value the startup at 18.4 billion dollars pre-money.

Now, this is notable because it's led by a traditional VC in Menlo Ventures and it's less than a billion

dollars meaning that this isn't essentially the cloud computing deals

which have largely been the funding story for generative AI startups over the last year. They need

billions of dollars in compute power to build their models. So mega caps with

their huge piles, they provide the capital and the compute power in return they get a lot of that

money back in cloud revenue plus the upside if valuations rise and valuations are

indeed rising at a remarkable rate we have shown this chart before and we will keep going

back to it. It shows the sales multiple for AI beneficiaries. At the top you have

open AI and Anthropic. They're still private so we use reported revenue numbers and valuations.

Below them, way below them, are the public mega cap. Some of the most expensive

companies out there, their sales multiple combined, doesn't even come close to those of the

pure Gen AI plays at the top.

Now we have done a few Tech Check weekly deep dives on valuations and funding in this virtuous cycle in the generative AI space so be sure

to check those out at camb.com slash t.c weekly but guys this latest round it comes

just weeks after the drama at its rival open AI that near implosion that has

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