Anthropic launches iPhone app and business plan

TL;DR: Anthropic launches enterprise plan and iPhone app for its AI chatbot Claude, raises $7.3B, competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and introduces faster and more powerful Claude 3 models.

AI startup competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Anthropic, the AI startup behind the popular chatbot Claude, has announced its first enterprise offering and a free iPhone app. The company, founded by ex-OpenAI executives, has raised about $7.3 billion from backers like Google, Salesforce, and Amazon.

The new business plan, called Team, has been tested with 30-50 customers in various industries. It offers access to Anthropic’s latest Claude models with increased usage limits, admin tools, and billing management.

Exciting news.

Free iPhone app and upcoming Android version

Anthropic’s free iOS app, available to all users, provides syncing with web chats and the ability to upload photos and files from a smartphone. An Android app is also in the works, with Anthropic recently hiring its first Android engineer.

Claude 3: Faster and more powerful

The launch follows the debut of Claude 3, a suite of AI models that Anthropic claims are its fastest and most powerful yet. The most capable model, Claude 3 Opus, reportedly outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini Ultra on industry benchmark tests.

Claude 3 offers multimodal support, allowing users to upload various types of unstructured data for analysis and answers. The other models, Sonnet and Haiku, are more compact and less expensive than Opus.

Clients and military use policy

Current clients using Claude include Pfizer, Asana, Zoom, Perplexity AI, Bridgewater Associates, and more. Anthropic’s stance on military use is similar to OpenAI’s updated policy, with strict guidance against using Claude for weapons or anything that can cause violence or harm.

The generative AI field has exploded over the past year, with a record $29.1 billion invested across nearly 700 deals in 2023. Despite concerns about bias, AI has quickly made its way into various industries.

A year ago, Anthropic had only rolled out the first version of its chatbot without consumer access or major fanfare. Now, it’s one of the hottest AI startups, directly competing with ChatGPT in both enterprise and consumer worlds.