Startup News: Anthropic and Hugging Face build on mobile AI offerings

Anthropic

Anthropic is bringing the power of its most up-to-date chatbot, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, to users of smartphones with Android operating systems.

Last week, the San Francisco-based generative AI company announced on its website that its new Android-based chatbot app works like its iOS and web-based versions. With all Claude 3.5 Sonnet apps, users get features like “the ability to tackle complex problems, like analyzing contracts while traveling or conducting market research to prepare for a meeting.”

A leading rival of OpenAI, Anthropic has developed several versions of Claude to compete with OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.

Anthropic is also partnering with one of its leading investors, Menlo Ventures, to create a $100 million fund to support early-stage startups. In announcing the new Anthology Fund last week, Menlo Ventures said that the investment portfolio will fuel the next generation of AI startups through “the powerful combination of Menlo’s extensive company-building experience and Anthropic’s pioneering AI technology and deep research expertise.”

According to Menlo Ventures, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups, the Anthology Fund will make investments starting at $100,000. CNBC reports that the new fund is similar to a venture fund formed in 2008 between Apple and venture firm Kleiner Perkins.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic was valued at $18.4 billion based on its latest funding round in March 2024, according to Forge Global. The company has received $4 billion in investments from e-commerce giant Amazon.

Anthropic’s Forge Price™ as of July 19, 2024, is $30.

Hugging Face

Meanwhile, Hugging Face, the New York City-based AI company that bills itself as the collaboration platform for the machine-learning community, has introduced SmolLM, a new family of compact language models designed for smartphone and other device usage.

According to startup trade publication VentureBeat, the SmolLM language models exceed comparable offerings from tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, and Alibaba’s Qwen in functionality. Hugging Face, founded in 2016, was valued at $4.57 billion, based on the company’s latest funding round in August 2023, according to Forge Global.

Hugging Face’s Forge Price™ is $25.25 as of July 19, 2024.

About the Author

John Kimelman is a veteran journalist who has worked at Barron’s and CNBC covering such topics as investing and commercial banking. Mr. Kimelman has received compensation from Forge Global, Inc. for authoring this article. Read more from John.

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