Anthropic surges as OpenAI struggles to keep up

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. This week in tech, we’re discussing Anthropic’s meteoric rise, both theological and financial, and California’s unprecedented infusion of political cash from Silicon Valley. With stock market filing, Anthropic takes the lead over OpenAI Anthropic, the AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, announced on Monday it had filed confidentially for an initial public offering on the US stock market. The company announced the filing in a short, two-paragraph blogpost that did not give an exact timeline for the company to go public and did not reveal the number of shares that it would offer. The filing continues the company’s banner year, as well as pre-empts its rival OpenAI, which is expected to imminently file for its own IPO. It’s the second blow in the rivalry in just a week. Las week, Anthropic leapfrogged OpenAI to become the world’s most valuable startup when it announced it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn, eclipsing OpenAI’s $852bn valuation. Anthropic was valued at $380bn in February, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the company’s “mind-blowing” revenue growth, particularly thanks to its coding tool that has proved extremely popular with business clients, is poised to bring the company its first profitable quarter in June. …