#anthropic

#anthropic

AI fever might have an iron grip on Fortune 500 CEOs, Wall Street traders, and government officials, but there are still some out their immune to the tech industry's charms. For evidence, look no further than activist and organizer Guido Reichstadter, who's currently running on day three of a hunger strike on the front steps of the headquarters of the AI giant Anthropic.

Anthropic, the AI startup behind the chatbot Claude, finalized a deal on Tuesday for a new, $13 billion Series F funding round that catapults its valuation from $61.5 billion to $183 billion, making it one of the most valuable startups ever. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business customers and has seen a sevenfold increase in its number of large clients with projects above $100,000 in the past year, the company said in a statement.

It could also be seen as reflecting a collective insanity in the world of finance. While the company boasted impressive growth and claimed its run-rate revenue has increased from $1 billion to $5 billion so far in 2025 alone, $13 billion is still a significant bet to place on a technology more notable for burning cash rather than generating profits.

Anthropic has told investors it is displeased by the prevalence of a popular kind of investment vehicle being marketed to those eager to get in on the AI boom. In its latest funding round, the AI startup is raising around $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation. It told one of its largest investors, Menlo Ventures, that the venture capital firm must use its own capital and not resort to a special purpose vehicle, or SPV, as it did in a previous funding round.

Anthropic has updated the usage policy for its Claude AI chatbot to include a ban on developing biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear weapons, amidst safety concerns.

Amodei stated, "It's like a mixture of true belief in the mission and belief in the upside of the equity. I think Anthropic has developed a reputation for doing what it says it will do."

"I've talked to plenty of people who got these offers at Anthropic and who just turned them down. Who wouldn't even talk to Mark Zuckerberg."

"People here are so mission-oriented," Benjamin Mann said. "They get these offers and then they say, 'Well, of course I'm not going to leave because my best case scenario at Meta is that we make money, and my best case at Anthropic is we affect the future of humanity.'"

Anthropic now permits job applicants to utilize AI for enhancing their submissions, aiming to balance AI proficiency with authentic human skill evaluation. Candidates can collaborate with AI to refine résumés, cover letters, and interview preparations.

"This is one of the first critical RCEs in Anthropic's MCP ecosystem, exposing a new class of browser-based attacks against AI developer tools," Oligo Security's Avi Lumelsky said in a report published last week.