Anthropic, a leading generative AI startup with a robust financial backing of $7.6 billion, is rolling out a new subscription service tailored for businesses, particularly in sectors subject to stringent regulations such as healthcare, finance, and legal. This launch also includes a fresh iOS application.
The enterprise subscription, known as Team, provides subscribers with prioritized access to the Claude 3 suite of generative AI models from Anthropic, along with enhanced administrative and user management features.
Scott White, Anthropic’s product lead, shared with TechCrunch that the Team subscription was introduced to meet the increasing demand from corporate clients eager to integrate Claude’s sophisticated AI functions throughout their companies. “The Team subscription is crafted to cater to organizations of varying sizes and fields, aiming to equip their staff with Claude’s adept language processing and creation tools within a secure and reliable framework,” he stated.
Joining the ranks of Anthropic’s individual premium offering, Pro, the Team plan promises a more generous allowance of usage for each user. This upgrade allows for a substantial boost in the volume of interactions possible with Claude. While specific figures are pending, Team subscribers are granted a context window of 200,000 tokens, approximately equivalent to 150,000 words, and they also enjoy all the perks of the Pro plan, including early access to upcoming features.
The term ‘context window’ or simply ‘context’ denotes the range of input data, such as text, that a model evaluates to produce its output, like generating additional text. Models equipped with a narrow context window often lose track of the content from even recent interactions, whereas those with broader context windows do not face this issue and, additionally, they have a better understanding of the data flow they process.
The Team plan introduces new features for managing billing and user oversight. In the upcoming weeks, it will expand to include collaborative tools such as citations for validating AI-generated statements (to counteract the tendency of models, including Anthropic’s, to produce erroneous information), connections with databases such as code repositories and CRM systems (for example, Salesforce), and notably, a shared workspace for team members to jointly develop AI-assisted documents and projects, as per Anthropic.
In the short term, Team subscribers will have access to enhanced tool functionalities for Claude 3, which has recently become available in an open beta phase. This enhancement permits users to customize Claude 3 with specialized tools for a broader array of tasks, akin to acquiring a company’s latest stock value or local weather updates, similar to the capabilities seen in OpenAI’s GPT models.
“By integrating Claude deeply into their collaborative processes, the Team plan is strategically positioned to help Anthropic secure a considerable share of the enterprise market. This comes as more organizations transition from experimenting with AI to implementing it on a larger scale to achieve impactful business results,” White commented. “While 2023 saw rapid AI trials by customers, the emphasis in 2024 has shifted towards pinpointing and expanding applications that yield tangible business benefits.”
Anthropic is confident in its strategy, yet convincing businesses to adopt may still require significant effort.
A Gartner survey recently revealed that 49% of companies find it challenging to quantify and demonstrate the value of AI initiatives, complicating internal advocacy for such projects. Furthermore, a McKinsey survey indicated that 66% of executives are of the opinion that generative AI may take several years before it can produce meaningful business impacts.
Investments in generative AI by corporations are predicted to surge significantly. According to IDC, by 2027, this spending is expected to hit $15.1 billion, which is nearly an eightfold increase from the figures recorded in 2023.
This anticipated growth is likely why companies like OpenAI, a prominent player in generative AI, are intensifying their efforts towards the enterprise market.
OpenAI has recently announced that over 600,000 users have registered for its enterprise-level service, ChatGPT Enterprise. The company has also launched a range of tools designed to meet the needs of corporate compliance and governance, including a new interface for evaluating model performance and quality.
Anthropic is setting the price for its Team plan at a competitive rate of $30 per user each month, with a requirement of at least five users. While OpenAI has not disclosed the cost of ChatGPT Enterprise, anecdotal reports from Reddit suggest prices ranging from $30 per user monthly for 120 users to $60 for 250 users.
Scott White remarked on the pricing strategy, “Anthropic’s Team plan is priced competitively and offers considerable value to businesses. The per-user pricing model is simple and scalable, allowing companies to grow their usage over time. This pricing supports Anthropic’s continued growth and stability and empowers businesses to use AI strategically.”
Anthropic’s strong financial position certainly contributes to the successful launch of Team.
Following a substantial $4 billion investment from Amazon in March (on top of a previous $2 billion from Google), Anthropic is reportedly on course to surpass $850 million in annual revenue by the end of 2024, marking a 70% increase from previous forecasts. With such robust financial backing, Anthropic views the Team plan as a strategic avenue for growth. For the time being, it appears that Anthropic has the luxury to foster organic growth for Team as it seeks to persuade more businesses of the superiority of its generative AI solutions over others.
An Anthropic iOS app
In another announcement on Wednesday, Anthropic revealed the debut of its iOS application. The move was somewhat anticipated, considering the company’s noticeable recruitment of iOS developers in recent times.
The new iOS app grants users the ability to interact with Claude 3, offering both complimentary and enhanced Pro and Team subscriptions. It seamlessly integrates with Anthropic’s web platform and leverages the image processing abilities of Claude 3 to conduct instantaneous evaluations of both uploaded and stored pictures. As an instance, users have the option to upload a snapshot of graphs from a slideshow and request Claude to provide a concise summary.
“Mirroring the capabilities of its web counterpart, the iOS app is designed to seamlessly integrate into the daily routines of users for both personal and professional purposes, complete with features like chat history synchronization and image uploading,” explained White. “It serves as an extension to the existing web and API services, offering an additional channel for interaction with the AI assistant. As our technological advancements progress, we remain committed to discovering innovative methods to enhance user experience across different platforms and scenarios, which includes the ongoing evolution of our mobile application’s features and capabilities.”