Google-backed Anthropic raises $100 million from South Korea's SK Telecom

Google-backed Anthropic raises $100 million from South Korea’s SK Telecom

August 16, 2023

By Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s largest telco SK Telecom said it will invest $100 million in U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to strengthen its telecommunications-driven AI business.

Anthropic, a startup competing with OpenAI in building AI foundation models, is among the most well-funded AI firms, having raised $450 million from investors including Alphabet Inc’s Google and Spark Capital in May.

The company, which also made a smaller investment in May, said on Sunday that the two companies plan to jointly develop a global telecommunications-oriented multilingual large language model and build an AI platform.

The company declined to reveal the size of its May investment or the size of its stake in Anthropic.

Google-backed Anthropic raises $100 million from South Korea's SK Telecom — The logo of SK Telecom is pictured at the GSMA’s 2023 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 28, 2023. REUTERS/Nacho Doce/File Photo

Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives in 2021. Its Claude models are seen as major competitors to OpenAI’s GPT-4.

In July, SK Telecom agreed with Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singapore Telecommunications to form an alliance to jointly develop telecommunications-driven AI businesses.