Anthropic, a startup founded by former OpenAI employees, has introduced a premium subscription plan for its AI chatbot, Claude 2. The subscription, named Claude Pro, is available at a monthly rate of $20 in the U.S. and £18 in the U.K., offering customers five times more usage compared to the free tier. Subscribers will enjoy benefits such as the ability to send a greater number of messages, priority access during high-traffic periods, and early access to new features.
The pricing of Claude Pro is on par with OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus, a direct competitor. Since its launch in July, Claude has been praised for its longer context windows, faster outputs, and complex reasoning capabilities. The new subscription allows users to send at least 100 messages every eight hours, a substantial increase from the 50 messages per three hours limit imposed on ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
However, the message limit can be quickly exhausted with longer conversations, especially those involving large attachments. This is because Claude 2 reviews the entire conversation, including attachments, with each new message received. The company has set these limits to maintain a balance between offering free trials to many people and accommodating power users.
Anthropic, which embarked on its journey in 2021 under the leadership of former OpenAI VP of research Dario Amodei, has secured funding of $1.45 billion and is valued in the single-digit billions. The firm anticipates needing $5 billion over the next two years to realize its vision for AI. The majority of the funds, including the revenue generated from Claude Pro, will be allocated to computing capacity, with plans to invest roughly a billion dollars in infrastructure over the next 18 months.
The company collaborates with several partners, including Quora, which facilitates access to Claude 2 and its less capable but more affordable version, Claude Instant, through its subscription-based AI app, Poe. Despite having thousands of customers and partners, Anthropic faces stiff competition from Cohere, AI21 Labs, and OpenAI, which is reportedly aiming to earn $1 billion in revenue next year.
