Why we backed Anthropic

Today, as Anthropic debuts its new Claude 3.5 Haiku model, upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, and a public beta that offers computer use, we are excited to share our thinking behind our prior investment in the company, deepening our commitment to the future of generative AI.

Daring to compete in a market of hyperscalers is no easy feat. Yet as students of the public cloud market, we’ve been on the hunt for another market that has the likelihood to achieve commensurate total addressable market (TAM)—and for a team that has the technical rigor, execution chops, and distribution strategy to become a market leader. That market is the foundation model layer, and that team is Anthropic.

The best foundation model developers make an essential ingredient to technological progress in the AI era: if oil powered the Industrial Revolution, intelligent models will power the AI Revolution.

Anthropic has created admirable moats of defensibility: the team has not only raised billions from the very hyperscalers we thought would dominate the field, but has also assembled a world-class team to deliver on its clear distribution advantage.

Claude, Anthropic’s core foundation model and AI assistant, has seen significant enterprise adoption—since its public launch in March 2023, Anthropic has announced partnerships with Amazon and Google, distributing Claude on Google Vertex and Amazon Bedrock. Claude is also differentiated from competitors in its model customization and safety features—Anthropic integrates its core models with clients' key data sources, yet it never trains its models on that data. 

While the consumer adoption of generative AI has been astronomical since the public launches of ChatGPT and Claude, the enterprise opportunity has just begun. And while the cloud represents a shift of existing spend from on-premises to software-as-a-service (SaaS), we can foresee a world in which every application (B2B and B2C) will rely on an AI brain, representing tens of billions of dollars in potential revenue.

The integration of AI into every facet of B2B and B2C applications mirrors pivotal platform shifts like the internet, mobile communications, and SaaS. AI is set to become the central nervous system of applications across industries, dramatically reshaping not just the software sector but additional software-enabled markets worldwide. Given the competitive moats on data, distribution, and capital, only a few large foundation models will compete for the majority of billions of dollars of spend. Our bet is on the market-leading product and team at Anthropic.

Leading Anthropic is a group of visionaries, spearheaded by CEO Dario Amodei, former research leader at OpenAI, and president Daniela Amodei, former safety and policy leader at OpenAI. Anthropic has assembled a team of industry experts in frontier AI research, policy and safety initiatives, and enterprise product management, deftly balancing important ethical questions and cutting-edge techniques with valuable applications.

AI safety is central to Anthropic’s mission: the company’s research team built an in-house constitution to align its language model with human values, as a transparency measure for its complex AI systems, and pioneered publishing a Responsible Scaling Policy that helps the company incorporate safety research into advanced model capabilities, incentivizing the development of AI models that are just as powerful as they are safe for public use. Unlike generic AI solutions, Anthropic enables businesses to tailor AI models to their unique needs, data, and use cases, allowing for a deep understanding of industry-specific terminology and challenges. This approach not only enhances AI effectiveness but also ensures better data privacy and security, empowering businesses to fully leverage AI while maintaining their competitive edge.

Bessemer's investment is a commitment to the future of AI. Through this partnership, we are not just fostering a company but championing a paradigm shift in technology that promises to be as (or more) impactful as the internet and cloud revolutions. Anthropic is at the forefront of this change, ready to reshape how our world interacts with AI, influencing industries and economies globally. 

If you are a builder in AI infrastructure, email us at aiInfra@BVP.com. Learn more about our AI roadmap and check our latest AI and data infra market map.