Anthropic Raises $3.5B To Build Next-Gen AI

Anthropic’s AI Ambitions Soar With $3.5B Raise At $61.5B Valuation

Anthropic, the AI powerhouse behind Claude, just locked in $3.5 billion in fresh funding. The company now stands tall at a $61.5 billion valuation—making it one of the biggest AI startups on the planet.

Who’s Betting Big?

The Series E round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, throwing in $1 billion. Other backers include Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco, Fidelity, General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures, Jane Street, and more. Amazon and Google had already invested a combined $5 billion in previous rounds.

The OpenAI Rivalry Heats Up

Anthropic’s war chest puts it head-to-head with OpenAI, which is reportedly eyeing a $300 billion valuation. But with investors pouring in cash, Anthropic is showing no signs of slowing down. Even Chinese startup DeepSeek, which claims cost-efficient AI models on par with OpenAI’s o1 model, isn’t shaking up the game for them.

Rapid Growth, Big Ambitions

Founded in 2021 by ex-OpenAI employees, Anthropic has been on a growth spree. In 2024, its annual revenue run rate was at $1 billion. In 2025, that number has already jumped by 30%.

The new capital will expand computing power, boost research, and fuel global expansion—especially in Asia and Europe.

Smarter AI, Bigger Impact

“This investment fuels our next-gen AI systems, pushing human potential while improving our understanding of AI,” said Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s CFO.

The company recently dropped Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a major upgrade built for developers. Their foundational AI models are even powering Amazon’s new Alexa+.

The AI race just got more intense. Anthropic is here to play.

Google Cloud Just Made Databases Smarter With Its Gen AI Toolbox

Google Cloud just launched Gen AI Toolbox for Databases in public beta. It’s an open-source server built with LangChain and designed to help developers integrate AI with databases securely and efficiently.

The Problem? AI Meets Databases

AI apps need to interact with databases. But that’s easier said than done. Developers face messy configurations, security headaches, and poor workflow visibility.

That’s where Gen AI Toolbox steps in. It makes connecting AI apps to databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, AlloyDB, Spanner, and Cloud SQL simple and safe.

What’s Inside the Toolbox?

🔹 A server that defines tools for AI apps
🔹 A client that integrates those tools into AI frameworks
🔹 OpenTelemetry integration for real-time tracking and debugging

This means faster, more secure, and scalable AI applications. Less hassle. More performance.

Built for LangChain – Better AI Agents

One of the biggest perks? Seamless integration with LangChain. LangGraph, an extension of LangChain, makes multi-agent AI workflows smoother and more reliable.

Harrison Chase, CEO of LangChain, is hyped:

Industry Experts Weigh In

Not everyone’s fully sold. Vim Wickramasinghe, CTO at Visuo, thinks it could’ve been built as an MCP server.

Andrew Brook, Google Cloud engineering director, clarified:

Try It Now – Public Beta is Open

The project is live on GitHub. Developers can test it, explore the code, and give feedback. AI-powered databases just got a whole lot easier.

Google Launches SpeciesNet; An Open-Source AI Model For Wildlife Research

Google just released SpeciesNet, an open-source AI model that helps identify animal species from camera trap photos. Anyone—researchers, conservationists, developers—can now access, modify, and use it for free.

Why does it matter?

Camera traps capture millions of images, making wildlife research slow and exhausting. Sorting them manually takes days, sometimes weeks. Enter SpeciesNet. This AI tool automates animal identification, making research faster and more efficient.

What Can It Do?

SpeciesNet can track animal populations, study behaviors, and analyze ecosystem changes. Since it’s open-source, anyone can improve it, adapt it to specific regions, or build new projects around it.

Trained on 65M+ Images

Google says SpeciesNet was trained on over 65 million photos. Data comes from sources like the Smithsonian, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Zoological Society of London. That’s a massive dataset, meaning it’s highly accurate at spotting different species.

Where to Get It?

It’s available on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, meaning you can use it freely and tweak it as long as you give proper credit.

Not the Only One in the Game

Google isn’t the first to drop AI-powered wildlife tools. Microsoft has MegaDetector, which detects animals, humans, and vehicles in images. There’s also Mbaza AI, a tool for biodiversity tracking that works without an internet connection. Platforms like AddaxAI and Wildlife Insights also help scientists speed up species identification.

Google’s AI Push

This launch is just one piece of Google’s AI expansion. It recently released Gemini Code Assist, a free AI-powered coding tool. And Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is set to invest $75 billion in AI in 2025.

AI is reshaping wildlife research—and Google is going all in.

AI’s Future Is Clear—DeepSeek Shows Why Open-Source Wins

The AI world is still buzzing from DeepSeek’s big move. Excitement. Concern. Debate. It’s shaking up everything. Lisa Hsu from AMD nailed it—open-source AI is the way forward.

Breaking Free from Centralized AI

DeepSeek is playing it differently. Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, it’s fully open-source. Anyone can download, tweak, and build on it. That’s a game-changer. Meanwhile, Meta and Google claim to be open, but their models come with licensing limits. Their data? Not publicly available.

AI isn’t like the smartphone boom, where Apple dominated by controlling its ecosystem. AI thrives on collaboration. No one company has all the data or all the expertise to push AI forward alone.

Blockchain Meets AI: A New Era

DeepSeek’s open-source approach syncs perfectly with DeAI (Decentralized AI). AI built on blockchain brings more transparency, fairness, and shared innovation. No single corporation gets to hoard breakthroughs.

Blockchain ensures that:

Smart contracts even automate fair incentives. A researcher improves an AI model? They get tokenized rewards. This makes AI progress a shared win instead of a corporate lock-in.

DeepSeek’s Bigger Picture

Some say DeepSeek is a threat to AI giants. But step back. It’s actually pushing AI forward. By sharing its code and weights, DeepSeek invites global collaboration. The result? AI breakthroughs for all, not just a few billion-dollar companies.

Real-World Impact: OpenAI in Action

🔹 In healthcare, AI-powered diagnostic tools are catching diseases early.
🔹 In supply chains, DeAI ensures ethical sourcing by tracking every step transparently.
🔹 In research, AI specialists and doctors are co-developing life-saving tech.

DeepSeek: The Accelerator for Decentralized AI

DeepSeek is proof that centralized AI isn’t the only path. It’s lean, efficient, and powerful. It’s showing that AI can be faster, fairer, and more accessible.

With compute, storage, and data evolving rapidly, AI’s future is decentralized, open, and unstoppable.

DeepSeek R1’s ChatGPT-Like Output—Is OpenAI Data in the Mix?

DeepSeek is in hot water. A forensic analysis by Copyleaks found that 74.2% of DeepSeek R1’s writing style matches OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This raises serious questions about how DeepSeek built its AI.

Copying OpenAI?

The study looked at sentence structure, phrasing, and word choice. The results? DeepSeek’s AI may have used ChatGPT-generated outputs during training. DeepSeek denies it, claiming its method is self-contained. But Copyleaks’ AI classifiers confirm the similarity.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is investigating unusual API activity in China. The fear? Mass scraping of ChatGPT responses to train rival AI models like DeepSeek. If true, it could mean that DeepSeek built its system on stolen data.

Microsoft’s Risky Move

Despite the controversy, Microsoft integrated DeepSeek R1 into its Azure AI Foundry. That’s surprising since Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor. If OpenAI proves that DeepSeek used its data without permission, Microsoft might be forced to cut ties.

Nvidia Takes a Hit

DeepSeek’s cost-efficient AI is shaking up the market. Its ability to run on lower computing power scared investors. The result? Nvidia lost $593 billion in stock value. If AI firms shift to lighter, cheaper models, demand for Nvidia’s powerful chips could drop.

DeepSeek’s AI: Full of Problems

The controversies don’t stop at data theft. A NewsGuard study found that DeepSeek R1 failed 83% of factual accuracy tests. It frequently aligns with Chinese government narratives, raising credibility concerns in global markets.

DeepSeek R2: A Desperate Rush?

Despite all the drama, DeepSeek is speeding up the release of its R2 model. But if R2 has the same accuracy and security issues, it could face global rejection.

AI Ethics and the Future of Regulation

The DeepSeek mess highlights big issues in AI development:

✔ Did DeepSeek steal OpenAI’s work?
✔ How should AI firms prove their data is legally obtained?
✔ Will governments demand transparency in AI training?

If OpenAI confirms that DeepSeek used its data, it could set a legal precedent. Stricter rules, potential lawsuits, and market bans might be coming. The AI world is watching closely.

ChatGPT’s Impact On Publishers Is Bigger Than We Feared—Here’s Why

Chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and others are draining traffic from websites. And publishers? They're losing big.

New data from TollBit reveals that AI bots send 96% less traffic to publishers than traditional search engines. That's devastating for media companies relying on clicks for ad revenue.

Bots Are Scraping, Not Sharing

TollBit looked at 160 news and blog sites. In just three months, AI bots scraped those pages 2 million times. Each page? Hit around seven times on average. The result? Zero ad dollars.

“These bots hammer sites every time someone asks a question,” said Toshit Panigrahi, CEO of TollBit. AI companies are feeding off publisher content without sending users back.

Yes, chatbots sometimes link to sources. But let’s be real—why click when the AI already summarizes everything?

iPhones x GPTs

Chegg Fights Back

One publisher is already taking action. Chegg, the textbook marketplace turned edtech giant, says Google’s AI Overview is destroying its ad revenue.

How bad is it? Chegg might go private or sell the company. CEO Nathan Schultz says Google’s AI keeps traffic trapped in its ecosystem.

Now, Chegg is suing Google. They’ve hired Goldman Sachs to estimate losses and Susman Godfrey to fight in court.

Attorney Ian Crosby calls Google’s AI Overviews a "threat to the internet."

The Bigger Picture

AI is reshaping how people consume content. But if chatbots keep stealing clicks, what happens to the publishers who create the original work?

The fight is just beginning.

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-Shen Pandi & Team