Investing Superstar Yasmin Razavi Turned A $75 Million Check Into A $3 Billion AI Windfall

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Forbes

Tech News, News, Business

4.4 • 18 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

It’s hard to imagine now, but back in 2021 venture capitalists weren’t sold on Anthropic. The mega-AI startup is now valued at $380 billion, but at the time it had no public product, no revenue and was trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. “AI was not viewed as this supersexy, exciting thing that you would want to invest in,” says cofounder and president Daniela Amodei, who had been an early OpenAI employee before leaving with six of her colleagues to start Anthropic that year. Her brother, CEO Dario Amodei, quickly drummed up $1.1 billion in funding from a range of billionaire investors, including Facebook alum Dustin Moskovitz and soon-to-be-disgraced crypto bro Sam Bankman-Fried. It was enough to cobble together an early version of Claude, Anthropic’s AI chatbot, but not nearly enough to fully train it to compete against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which exploded onto the scene in November 2022. Scared of spending billions backing what appeared to be an also-ran, most traditional VCs shied away—except Spark Capital partner Yasmin Razavi. By Iain Martin, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Today,
0:01.2	Some follow the noise.
0:03.0	Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion
0:07.7	dollar swings.
0:09.0	There's a money side to every story.
0:11.4	Get the money side of the story.
0:13.5	Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.
0:19.0	Today on Forbes, investing superstar Yasmin Razavi turned a $75 million check into a $3 billion
0:27.2	AI windfall.
0:29.9	It's hard to imagine now, but back in 2021, venture capitalists weren't sold on Anthropic.
0:36.9	A mega AI startup has been valued at $380 billion
0:40.1	as of earlier this year, but last Thursday announced it had raised $65 billion in Series H funding,
0:47.2	valuing the company at $965 billion. But at the time back in 2021, it had no public product, no revenue, and was trying to raise
0:57.5	hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:59.8	Co-founder and president, Daniela Amade, who had been an early Open AI employee before leaving
1:05.2	with six of her colleagues to start Anthropic that year, says, quote, AI was not viewed as this super sexy, exciting thing that you would want to invest in.
1:15.3	Her brother, CEO Dario Amadeh quickly drummed up $1.1 billion in funding from a range of billionaire
1:22.5	investors, including Facebook alum Dustin Moskowitz and soon to be disgraced crypto-discraised Crypto-Bro, Sam Bankman-Fried.
1:30.4	It was enough to cobble together an early version of Claude, Anthropics AI chatbot,
1:35.1	but not nearly enough to fully train it to compete against OpenAI's chat GPT,
1:39.8	which exploded onto the scene in November 2022.
1:43.6	Scared of spending billions backing what appeared to be an also-ran,
	...

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