Zoom Communications Inc., the videoconferencing company, has netted about $1 billion on an investment it made in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC in early 2023.
The total value of Zoom’s stake in the rapidly ascendant AI company is worth about $1.27 billion, according to a regulatory filing Friday. That value is primed to increase further as Anthropic nears the completion of another funding round as soon as next week.
The holding has been on an exponential climb since early 2023, when Zoom invested in the startup as part of a partnership to use Anthropic’s Claude models. Zoom has been making a push to add more artificial intelligence features, such as a workplace AI assistant.
Since the investment, Anthropic has become one of the world’s fastest-growing and most closely watched companies. Zoom’s current assessment of its stake in Anthropic is based on a February round which valued the company at $380 billion. Bloomberg has reported that Anthropic is close to finalizing a round at a valuation above $900 billion.
Zoom disclosed $51 million in new strategic investments in early 2023, when it announced the Anthropic partnership, though didn’t specify whether this full sum was for Anthropic. The company also invested an additional $46 million in Anthropic in recent months, it disclosed in the Friday filing.
“A timely investment in a financial rocket ship” has helped boost Zoom’s share price in recent weeks, KeyBanc analyst Jackson Ader said in a note after Zoom’s quarterly earnings report Thursday. The software company posted results that helped boost Wall Street’s confidence in its expanded suite of products.