Jan 7 (Reuters) - AI startup Anthropic is near a deal to

raise an additional $2 billion at a price that values the

company at $60 billion, sources said, months after its $4

billion funding from Amazon ( AMZN ).

Venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading

the funding round, according to the sources, who requested

anonymity to discuss private matters.

The new funding, $6 billion in total, will mark a jump in

valuation for Anthropic, a major competitor of OpenAI in the

foundation model space. Anthropic was valued at around $18

billion in a fundraise led by Menlo Ventures last year.

Anthropic declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal first

reported the funding on Tuesday.

Amazon ( AMZN ) late last year doubled its investment in the startup

to $8 billion, as the e-commerce giant went up against Big Tech

rivals in a race to capitalize on generative AI technology. The

latest $4 billion issued to Amazon ( AMZN ) in convertible notes will be

converted into equity through this round.

Anthropic, whose annualized revenue hit about $875 million,

sells access to its models directly and through third-party

cloud services including Amazon Web Services. The large language

models development requires expensive computing, as well as top

talents.

Co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario

and Daniela Amodei, San Francisco-based Anthropic also received

$2 billion investment from Alphabet in 2023.

Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed OpenAI triggered an AI arms race

after it launched ChatGPT in November 2022. The growing

popularity of the company and new product launches helped it

close a $6.6 billion funding round in October, potentially

taking its valuation to $157 billion.

With outsized funding rounds by companies such as Anthropic

and xAI, AI startups have accounted for nearly half of the

venture capital dollar raised in the U.S. last year, according

to PitchBook data.

(Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco, Krystal Hu in New

York, Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City;

Editing by Devika Syamnath, Alan Barona and Lincoln Feast.)