4. Anthropic
Founders: Dario Amodei (CEO), Daniela Amodei, Chris Olah, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, Tom BrownLaunched: 2021Headquarters: San FranciscoFunding: N/AValuation: $61.5 billionKey Technologies: Artificial intelligenceIndustry: Enterprise technologyPrevious appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 1 (No. 7 in 2024)
If OpenAI's explosive growth is best measured by consumer adoption, its rival Anthropic is the gold standard for enterprise use of large language models.
That is not to say OpenAI isn't making gains in enterprise deals, and Anthropic is popular with millions of individuals for gen AI tasks. But its AI-as-a-service model, in particular for coding tasks where generative AI is making huge leaps in ability, has led the Alphabet- and Amazon-backed startup to exponentially grow its business-to-business deals, and revenue.
Anthropic just hit $3 billion in annualized revenue, an increase in under one year from the $1 billion revenue pace it was on last December, with many customers paying as much as $100,000. The company told CNBC that annual revenue from code generation and software development rose by 10x in the last three months of 2024.
From March to May 2025 alone, annual recurring revenue grew by $1 billion.
"We've looked at the IPOs of over 200 public software companies, and this growth rate has never happened," Meritech General Partner Alex Clayton recently told CNBC.
The growth has pushed up the firm's valuation, and its access to various forms of capital. In mid-May, it received a $2.5 billion credit line. That followed a $3.5 billion funding round in March that valued the company – which was founded by former OpenAI executives and first debuted its Claude chatbot in 2023 – at $61.5 billion.
Companies that use Anthropic AI include top coding startups, including GitLab and Cursor, as well as big names across the market, from Intuit to Pfizer, Salesforce, Asana, DoorDash and fellow disruptor Canva.
Claude's biggest moment yet came in May, when Anthropic launched two models, called Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, that can work for seven-consecutive hours without performance degradation, a milestone in AI productivity.
"I do a lot of writing with Claude, and I think prior to Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, I was mostly using the models as a thinking partner, but still doing most of the writing myself," Mike Krieger, Anthropic's chief product officer, recently told CNBC. "And they've crossed this threshold where now most of my writing is actually ... Opus mostly, and it now is unrecognizable from my writing."
Last October, it launched its "agentic AI" rival to offerings from Meta and OpenAI's Operator, called Computer Use, with Claude effectively being able to view a computer monitor, use buttons, type, search the internet and execute real-time tasks. Those types of capabilities are being adopted by companies including PayPal, Square, Plaid, Atlassian and Asana.
Anthropic has been pouring its R&D dollars into more complex tasks for business use cases, shifting away from some focus on B2B and consumer chatbot technology earlier in its history.
Anthropic has not been free of AI controversy — Reddit recently sued the company, alleging unauthorized use of content — and its leadership has not shied away from sensitive AI debates, whether the issue is the threat to human jobs or geopolitics.
Its CEO Dario Amodei recently predicted that AI could wipe out as much as 50% of entry-level office jobs. The company has also taken a vocal stance on the trade war with China and export controls that the U.S. government has placed on chips, after a year marked by the emergence of China's DeepSeek, a direct threat to both Anthropic and OpenAI's lead in the AI race. Anthropic has argued for tighter export controls, referencing DeepSeek's rise, and sparked a war of words with chip giant Nvidia when it claimed in a blog post that Chinese smugglers hide AI chips in "prosthetic baby bumps" and "packed alongside live lobsters."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
CoreWeave (CRWV) Jumps 8% on Rosy Growth Prospects
CoreWeave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) is one of the CoreWeave grew its share prices by 7.99 percent on Friday to hit a new all-time high, as investors continued to load up positions amid rosy growth prospects. At intraday trading, shares of CoreWeave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) jumped as high as 10 percent to hit $187, before paring gains to finish the day at $170, as investors appeared to have flocked to the booming Artificial Intelligence industry for safety to mitigate risks from the ongoing geopolitical tensions. In recent news, CoreWeave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) announced a record-breaking performance from using 2,496 of Nvidia Corp.'s latest Grace Blackwell Chips on its AI-optimized cloud platform, making its submission the largest-ever benchmarked under MLPerf. In March this year, CoreWeave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) bagged an $11.9-billion deal with OpenAI and welcomed it as a new investor through the sale of $350 million CRWV stocks to the latter. Last month, OpenAI upsized the deal with another $4 billion worth of contract. A close-up of a network administrator's hands working on a cloud computing server. Last month, it was tapped by Aston Martin Aramco as its official AI cloud computing partner, where it will provide AI-accelerated engineering opportunities to support car design efficiency. While we acknowledge the potential of CRWV as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Circle Internet (CRCL) Soars 20.4% as Firm Gets 'Buy' Reco
Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) is one of the Circle Internet jumped by 20.39 percent on Friday to end at $240.28 as investor sentiment was boosted by an investment firm's upgraded rating. On Friday, Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) earned its first 'buy' recommendation from Seaport Global following the Senate's passage of a legislation that would allow the wide usage of Stablecoins by banks, fintech, and retailers, among others. The news followed Circle Internet Group's (NYSE:CRCL) announcement earlier this week that its USDC stablecoins are being adopted by retail giants Amazon and Walmart, as well as e-commerce operator Shopify. According to Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL), Shopify began rolling out its feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins—a cryptocurrency founded by its founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville—for payments and order fulfillment flows. Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) also said that it partnered with blockchain firm Ripple to bring USDC stablecoins to the latter's XRP Ledger blockchain as well as with digital identity company World for the addition of USDC and CCTP V2 (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol) on World Chain. Circle Internet jumped by 20.39 percent on Friday to end at $240.28 as investor sentiment was boosted by an investment firm's upgraded rating. On Friday, Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) earned its first 'buy' recommendation from Seaport Global following the Senate's passage of a legislation that would allow the wide usage of Stablecoins by banks, fintech, and retailers, among others. The news followed Circle Internet Group's (NYSE:CRCL) announcement earlier this week that its USDC stablecoins are being adopted by retail giants Amazon and Walmart, as well as e-commerce operator Shopify. According to Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL), Shopify began rolling out its feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins—a cryptocurrency founded by its founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville—for payments and order fulfillment flows. A wide angle view of a bustling cityscape, capturing the potential of the consumer internet. Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) also said that it partnered with blockchain firm Ripple to bring USDC stablecoins to the latter's XRP Ledger blockchain as well as with digital identity company World for the addition of USDC and CCTP V2 (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol) on World Chain. While we acknowledge the potential of CRCL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Circle Internet (CRCL) Soars 20.4% as Firm Gets 'Buy' Reco
Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) is one of the Circle Internet jumped by 20.39 percent on Friday to end at $240.28 as investor sentiment was boosted by an investment firm's upgraded rating. On Friday, Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) earned its first 'buy' recommendation from Seaport Global following the Senate's passage of a legislation that would allow the wide usage of Stablecoins by banks, fintech, and retailers, among others. The news followed Circle Internet Group's (NYSE:CRCL) announcement earlier this week that its USDC stablecoins are being adopted by retail giants Amazon and Walmart, as well as e-commerce operator Shopify. According to Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL), Shopify began rolling out its feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins—a cryptocurrency founded by its founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville—for payments and order fulfillment flows. Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) also said that it partnered with blockchain firm Ripple to bring USDC stablecoins to the latter's XRP Ledger blockchain as well as with digital identity company World for the addition of USDC and CCTP V2 (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol) on World Chain. Circle Internet jumped by 20.39 percent on Friday to end at $240.28 as investor sentiment was boosted by an investment firm's upgraded rating. On Friday, Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) earned its first 'buy' recommendation from Seaport Global following the Senate's passage of a legislation that would allow the wide usage of Stablecoins by banks, fintech, and retailers, among others. The news followed Circle Internet Group's (NYSE:CRCL) announcement earlier this week that its USDC stablecoins are being adopted by retail giants Amazon and Walmart, as well as e-commerce operator Shopify. According to Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL), Shopify began rolling out its feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins—a cryptocurrency founded by its founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville—for payments and order fulfillment flows. A wide angle view of a bustling cityscape, capturing the potential of the consumer internet. Circle Internet Group (NYSE:CRCL) also said that it partnered with blockchain firm Ripple to bring USDC stablecoins to the latter's XRP Ledger blockchain as well as with digital identity company World for the addition of USDC and CCTP V2 (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol) on World Chain. While we acknowledge the potential of CRCL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Sign in to access your portfolio
