Anthropic, an emerging rival to leading AI lab OpenAI, has projected staggering near-term revenue growth that suggests the fast maturation of commercial applications for large language models.
The startup told investors it expects to generate over $850 million in annualized revenue by end of 2024 - a more than eightfold increase in monthly revenue versus around September this year, according to an investor memo reviewed by The Information.
Just three months ago, Anthropic was anticipating $500 million in annualized revenue by end 2024. The revised guidance indicates generative AI demand is expanding quicker than envisioned.
Anthropic's Claude software utilizes large language models to produce human-like text and analyze documents. Its rapid sales expansion implies enterprises are finding immediate utility in these capabilities to enhance workflows - from accelerating software development to improving investment decision-making.
The revenue update comes as Anthropic raises ~$750 million from Menlo Ventures and others at a $15 billion valuation, highlighting heightened investor enthusiasm. With backing from Amazon, Google and eager customers like Notion, Quora and DuckDuckGo, the startup looks primed to compete with OpenAI in commercializing the next era of artificial intelligence.
Still, the market remains nascent. Their largest backers, Amazon and Google, are oushing their own competing offerings, many enterprises are looking for lower-cost AI alternatives, and the extent of model improvements over today's chatbots remains uncertain.
Anthropic also faces the perpetual challenge of responsibly developing AI without enabling harmful use cases. Its leaders split from OpenAI over disagreements related to AI safety.
Nonetheless, the numbers signal anthropic's pole position. OpenAI reportedly passed $83 million per month in summer 2023 before Microsoft turbocharged its distribution. Anthropic may hit similar scale rapidly with cloud allies Amazon and Google.
The race to monetize generative AI is accelerating quicker than almost anyone in tech predicted. For enterprises, the key questions become how rapidly these capabilities will progress, and how soon they become indispensable to competitive advantage. Anthropic's rise suggests that future is nearer than later.