Quild #55: Anthropic

This is the Quild daily, highlighting one early-stage startup that has statistically significant signals of becoming a unicorn.

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that’s working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Large, general systems of today can have significant benefits, but can also be unpredictable, unreliable, and opaque: the goal is to make progress on these issues.

Founders: Dario, Daniela

Signals:

1.  Top company alumni

   1. Dario was a researcher at OpenAI, Google, and Baidu for over 6 years

   2. Daniela was handling operations at OpenAI for over 2 years

2. Venture-backed experience

   1. Daniela was handling operations at Stripe for over 5 years

3. Top university alumni

   1. Dario graduated from Stanford University (BS) and Princeton University (PhD)

   2. Daniela graduated from UC Santa Cruz (BS)

4. Fast team growth

   1. Grew 2.3x YoY to 39 employees

   2. And hiring a lot more

5. Accelerated financing

   1. Founded and announced series A in 2021

Other note: Non-traditional but noteworthy financing of $124 million series A led by Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Asana founder Dustin Moskovitz

Till tomorrow, Kenn