The close relationships between AI start-ups and their Big Tech backers were probed by the Federal Trade Commission during Joe Biden’s administration.
Under outgoing commissioner Lina Khan, the FTC had targeted investments from Google and Amazon into Anthropic and Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, reviewing the impact of the deals on competition in the nascent sector. But with Khan stepping down in the coming weeks, dealmakers are growing more confident in their ability to forge tie-ups.
Anthropic’s revenue hit an annualized $1 billion in December, up roughly 10 times on a year earlier, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s finances.
Nonetheless, investors are not anticipating that Anthropic or its rivals will be profitable in the near future, given the steep costs of developing leading AI models. With new breakthroughs, they believe the technology could ultimately create trillions of dollars in value.
“Right now I’m more confident than I have been at any previous time that we are very close to powerful capabilities… AI systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks,” Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees, has sought to differentiate itself from its rivals by focusing on AI safety. It has poached multiple staff from OpenAI in recent months, including a co-founder of the company.
The group was also first to release certain features, such as the ability for its AI to control computers, and is focused this year, alongside rivals, on creating AI agents—software that can complete tasks and navigate the web on behalf of human users.
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