Following OpenAI’s announcement of the latest iteration of the GPT large language model, its biggest competitor in genetic AI in the US has announced its own extension. Humane said Monday that Claude, its AI assistant, is now in Europe with support for “multiple languages,” including French, German, Italian and Spanish on Claude.ai, its iOS app and business plan for teams.
The release comes after Anthropic expanded its API in Europe to let developers use and integrate its models. Both are part of a larger push at startup to put natural gas on a faster growth path. Anthropic has raised nearly $8 billion to date at a valuation of $18.4 billion (after money), with more than $7 billion of that raised in the last year.
Co-founder and president Daniela Amodei confirmed to TechCrunch that Anthropic is in the process of raising more seed capital beyond that. “Yes, but we can’t comment further,” she said of the fundraising in an email interview.
Anthropic’s list of nearly 60 current investors includes strategic sectors Amazon, Google, Salesforce, SAP and Zoom. Alameda and FTX recently announced plans to sell its former shares for an increased value of $884 million as part of a secondary transaction related to a bankruptcy proceeding.
Anthropic isn’t alone in capitalizing on the huge investor appetite to back AI startups. We understand from sources close to Mistral AI, another LLM player, that it is talking to investors to raise nearly $600 million at a $6 billion valuation. SoftBank is not an investor in any of these companies, putting it in the frame as a potential backer.
Investors are very excited about genetic AI right now, but consumers may be a little less so. As we reported last week, Anthropic’s iOS app, which launched in early May, has had a lukewarm reception from users so far, highlighting larger questions about how much of the interest we’re seeing in AI right now is just a fad. . That could pose a challenge as the company looks for further business across the pond.
Amodei believes its own iOS launch versus OpenAI’s isn’t a direct comparison, given Anthropic’s primary focus on work and business apps, with an emphasis on more “fluid” experiences that move from a person to a work account and switch between different interfaces and platforms and What it implies may have been the fate of time for her biggest rival.
“ChatGPT for mobile came at a time when consumer applications of its kind were still very nascent, and a lot has changed since then,” he said. He added that “millions” of consumers in the US and UK use Claude “and we continue to see really strong adoption of our paid subscription to Claude (Claude Pro) since the launch of the Claude 3”, the company’s latest model, which was released. earlier this year.
“Our main focus is on work and business applications — and its recent launch Claude team design it is indicative of a continuing trend for us. We want our users to interact with Claude in whatever way feels most intuitive to them — whether it’s mobile, web, or the API. We’re building towards a fairly fluid experience where Claude users can switch between their personal and work accounts and switch between laptop or mobile, the same way employees engage with Slack on their laptops during the work day or on their phones when they’re on the go.”
Amodei declined to give specifics on API adoption in Europe, but said it sees “sharp growth rates that continue to increase in key European markets such as France and Germany.” Stimulating user interest across Europe is just one of the company’s challenges in this market.
Europe has been one of the loudest voices on AI security and regulation, notably with the AI Act passed earlier this year. Amodei believes that Anthropic is well placed to operate within European frameworks.
“Anthropic was founded on the premise of building the safest AI systems in the industry and leading AI security research,” he said, adding that the company is working “diligently” to comply with regulations such as GDPR in the EU. He added that more remains to be seen on how the AI Act will be implemented.
“While the AI Act has been passed, there are still a number of steps to develop detailed implementing directives in the coming months and we intend to work with the EU in this process.” The company, he added, continues to work and contribute to industry efforts to improve AI security, including banning the use of its technology for political campaigns and lobbying, with built-in automated systems to detect breaches related to it and misinformation.
Her work in mechanistic interpretability — which she described as “research that seeks to open the ‘black box’ of AI models and reveal their inner workings” — had a major breakthrough in 2023 around “dictionary learningTo understand what’s going on inside an AI model like this “thinks,” he said. “Ultimately, we hope to use this new understanding to develop methods to steer models toward safer behaviors.”
Anthropic currently has 40 employees from its London office with some contractors based in European countries, Amodei said, and is preparing to hire more, specifically to create a new office in Dublin.
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