Anthropic on Monday said it has built its “most intelligent” artificial intelligence (AI) model so far, the latest salvo in an escalating competition for chatbot bragging rights.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet, described as the only hybrid model available on the market, combines the ability to reason with a more traditional model that churns out answers in real time, according to the Amazon.com Inc.-backed startup.
“This model has all the capabilities wrapped together — we want one coherent AI that can help with everything,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s co-founder and science chief, told CNBC. “There’s an advantage in simplicity for our customers.”
Kaplan compared Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s functionality to that of a human brain. Some questions prompt instant responses, he said, while more complex ones require deeper thinking. Anthropic’s model does both, he said. [Anthropic was the first to release a chatbot with agent capability late last year.]
The company is spinning its latest AI model as a cut above rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as enterprise customers and consumers consider which chatbots to use for work and at home. But Anthropic also faces stiff competition from Chinese startup DeepSeek, which is hurrying its new AI reasoning model, R2, early this year, as well as others. DeepSeek’s new R2 comes with better coding and the ability to reason in languages besides English, based on a Reuters report.
In a post on social media platform X in early February, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company plans to do a “better job of sharing our intended roadmap, and a much better job simplifying our product offerings.”
The very nature of so many moves and countermoves of AI model capabilities has seemingly accelerated in recent months, leading to even more fund-raising to build the latest and greatest products.
Indeed, Anthropic is in the process of seeking a $3.5 billion funding round from venture firms General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners that would value it at $61.5 billion, Reuters reported Monday. Anthropic’s major backer, Amazon.com Inc., has already injected about $8 billion into the startup.
