Anthropic is moving to take greater control of the computing infrastructure that powers its AI models, pursuing data center leases that would place the company in direct control of operating its own facilities.
The effort could secure vast amounts of power-intensive capacity as the company positions itself for its initial public offering.
• Alphabet stock is showing positive momentum. What’s the outlook for GOOG shares?
Anthropic has assembled more than a dozen preliminary agreements tied to U.S. data centers representing more than 1 gigawatt of capacity, according to The Information and Reuters.
The company is also exploring ways for Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google to help support the financial commitments associated with those leases.
Under the arrangements under discussion, Google could provide guarantees tied to Anthropic’s lease obligations, helping the startup shoulder the enormous costs of securing computing infrastructure.
The Information also reported that Google co-designs some of the server chips Anthropic may ultimately deploy at those facilities.
The expansion underscores the escalating race among leading AI developers to lock down the computing power needed to train and run increasingly sophisticated models.
Surging demand for Anthropic’s Claude models has already pushed the company to pursue additional capacity through large-scale infrastructure agreements.
Earlier this month, Anthropic disclosed that it had confidentially filed paperwork for a U.S. initial public offering. The company has not yet determined how many shares it would sell or what price it would seek in an offering.
The Billion-Dollar Race For AI Computing Power
The infrastructure push comes as Anthropic’s valuation continues to climb. Anthropic's latest funding round valued the startup at $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI as the most valuable startup, after raising $65 billion in Series H. Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital led the funding round.
"This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," said Krishna Rao, CFO of Anthropic.
In April, Anthropic also said Alphabet was committing up to $40 billion in the company, Bloomberg reported.
Earlier this week, Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5, its most capable consumer-facing AI model to date. The company said Fable 5 excels at coding, research and other knowledge-intensive tasks, particularly over long and complex workloads.
If Anthropic goes public at a $1 trillion valuation, it would instantly rank among the most valuable companies globally and could become the second- or third-largest IPO in history, trailing SpaceX and Saudi Aramco.
Photo: Shutterstock
Login to comment