General artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC is reportedly looking to raise new funding on a valuation of up to $40 billion.

The report comes today from The Information, citing an unnamed existing investor who spoke to company leaders. It’s reported that talks are only in an early stage and that it’s not clear whether investors will agree to such a high valuation.

The Information also said Anthropic is scheduled to present to investors at Morgan Stanley’s private tech conference next month. It’s noted that though startups don’t typically employ investment banks to drum up investment, they do with complicated rounds and Anthropic has previously raised capital from corporate investors, as opposed to only venture capital firms.

The news that Anthropic is seeking to raise new funding comes nearly two weeks after it was reported that Anthropic’s main rival, OpenAI, was seeking to raise $6.5 billion on a $150 billion valuation.

Coming into a new round, Anthropic has raised about $7.6 billion, including forward commitments. The largest investor in Anthropic is Amazon.com Inc., which has invested twice in the company — a round of $2.75 billion in March and $1.25 billion in  September 2023.

Any new round being raised by Anthropic could involve Amazon again, given the increasing partnership between the two. Whereas Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. have invested in and partnered with OpenAI to provide generative AI services and Google LLC is building its own in-house AI models, Amazon has teamed with Anthropic.

Still, other investors in Anthropic include Google, Microsoft, Salesforce Ventures and Zoom Video Communications Inc.

The partnership between the two companies includes Anthropic’s large language models being available on Amazon Bedrock, with a report in August also suggesting that Anthropic will power newer versions of Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic focuses on creating AI systems that are designed to be interpretable, safe and steerable, prioritizing the development of models that follow ethical guidelines to minimize harmful or unpredictable outputs.

The company’s flagship AI, Claude, operates based on “constitutional AI,” an AI model that uses predefined principles to guide its outputs to avoid toxic or discriminatory responses.

Image: Anthropic