The funding round is being led by the venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners. The $60 billion valuation includes the money Anthropic plans to raise in the round.

The deal would make Anthropic the fifth-most valuable US startup after SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe and Databricks, according to data provider CB Insights. It was valued last year at $18 billion in a round led by Menlo Ventures.

There has been a dealmaking frenzy among AI companies since OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in an October round that nearly doubled its value to $157 billion. Two other startups, Elon [look at me]  Musk's xAI and Perplexity, subsequently raised money at substantially increased valuations.