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MicroVentures’ Portfolio Company: Anthropic’s History and Milestones

MicroVentures’ Portfolio Company: Anthropic’s History and Milestones

With the rise of artificial intelligence in daily life, one of the key concerns has been safety and ethics. Anthropic has positioned itself in the artificial intelligence (AI) race as a company dedicated to developing safe, ethical, and accurate AI systems. In this blog, learn more about Anthropic’s founding story, Anthropic’s history and milestones, its products, and funding.

Anthropic’s History and Milestones

Siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic in 2021. Previously serving as executives at OpenAI, the two left the company in 2020 alongside five other colleagues due to concerns over a lack of commitment to safety. They recognized the potential power AI held and grew increasingly concerned about the potential dangers including misinformation, bias, and unintended harmful behavior.

The group believed AI development needed a stronger emphasis on safety, interpretability, and alignment with human values. These principles weren’t at the forefront of the AI industry at this time, the focus was primarily on innovation and scaling as startups fought to reach the top of the nascent industry.

Anthropic’s Founding Story

This group of former OpenAI researches bonded over a shared vision for responsible AI development. Anthropic set out with three objectives:

  1. Build AI systems that are helpful, honest, and harmless
  2. Develop techniques to make AI behavior more predictable and controllable
  3. Ensure AI advancements benefit humanity rather than pose existential risks

From its earliest days, Anthropic positioned itself as a research-driven organization, blending cutting-edge AI development with rigorous safety protocols.

Anthropic’s Products

Anthropic’s work revolves around creating AI systems that are not only powerful but also aligned with human values.

Claude AI

Claude is Anthropic’s flagship AI chatbot, designed to be more reliable and steerable than other large language models (LLMs). Unlike other chatbots, Claude uses Constitutional AI, a framework that allows the AI to adhere to predefined ethical guidelines. Claude features built-in safeguards to help minimize misinformation and biased responses in addition to allowing users to adjust Claude’s behavior to fit specific needs.

Constitutional AI

At the core of Anthropic’s work and central to its goal of safe and ethical AI, Constitutional AI represents a framework that AI must refer to and implement whenever responding to user inquiries. It is a method for training AI systems using a set of guiding principles. Instead of relying solely on human feedback, the AI learns to critique and improve its own responses based on these rules. This approach allows for reduced reliance on extensive human moderation and helps create AI systems that are inherently more aligned with ethical standards.

AI Research & Safety Initiatives

In addition to its main products, Anthropic also regularly publishes research on AI alignment, interpretability, and robustness. Some of its key areas of focus include understanding how AI models make decisions, how to develop methods to supervise AI systems as they scale and become more complex, and policy discussions on responsible AI development.

Anthropic Milestones

Over the years, Anthropic has reached numerous milestones in terms of traction, revenue, and awards. Some of its recent milestones are, but not limited to, the following:

  • Reportedly nearing a deal to raise as much as $5B in fresh funding that would value the startup at $170B as of July 2025, a ~176% increase from the $61.5B valuation it achieved earlier this year[1]
  • Reached a pace of $4B in annual revenue as of July 2025, an increase of ~4x from the start of the year[2]
  • In February 2025, it estimated its revenue could potentially increase as high as $34.5B by 2027[3]
  • Google agreed in January 2025 to invest $1B+ in Anthropic, building on its past investments of $2B[4]

Anthropic Funding

Anthropic has raised ~$20.7B and was valued at $61.5B as of its last funding round in January 2025. Its most recent funding round, a Series E, brought in $3.5B in new funding, and was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Investments, Fidelity, General Catalyst, Jane Street, Menlo Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, among other new and existing investors. The new capital is expected to be used to advance its development of next-generation AI systems, expand its compute capacity, deepen its research in mechanistic interpretability and alignment, and accelerate its international expansion.[5]

Final Thoughts

Anthropic has positioned itself as a leader in safe and ethical AI development, distinguishing itself from competitors with its focus on alignment and transparency. With strong financial backing and a growing product suite Anthropic is poised to play a role in the future of AI in a responsible and impactful way.

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[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-29/anthropic-nears-deal-to-raise-funding-at-170-billion-valuation

[2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-revenue-hits-4-billion-annual-pace-competition-cursor-intensifies

[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/anthropic-projects-soaring-growth-345-billion-2027-revenue-information-reports-2025-02-13/

[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/22/google-agrees-to-new-1-billion-investment-in-anthropic.html

[5] https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-series-e-at-usd61-5b-post-money-valuation

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The information presented here is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be, nor should it be construed or used as, comprehensive offering documentation for any security, investment, tax or legal advice, a recommendation, or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, an interest, directly or indirectly, in any company. Investing in both early-stage and later-stage companies carries a high degree of risk. A loss of an investor’s entire investment is possible, and no profit may be realized. Investors should be aware that these types of investments are illiquid and should anticipate holding until an exit occurs.