Anthropic's $61.5B Series E

**Anthropic** raised a **$3.5 billion Series E funding round** at a **$61.5 billion valuation**, signaling strong financial backing for the **Claude** AI model. **GPT-4.5** achieved **#1 rank across all categories** on the LMArena leaderboard, excelling in multi-turn conversations, coding, math, creative writing, and style control. **DeepSeek R1** tied with GPT-4.5 for top performance on hard prompts with style control. Discussions highlighted comparisons between **GPT-4.5** and **Claude 3.7 Sonnet** in coding and workflow applications. The importance of the **LMSYS benchmark** was emphasized, though some questioned the relevance of benchmarks versus user acquisition. Additionally, **Perplexity AI** partnered with **Deutsche Telekom** to integrate the **Perplexity Assistant** into a new AI phone.