Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI to become the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startup. The Claude maker announced on Thursday that it raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round. This will push the company’s post-money valuation to $965 billion.
The figure places Anthropic just short of a trillion dollars and ahead of rival OpenAI. OpenAI attracted an $852 billion valuation in its last fundraising round in March. Anthropic’s CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei now leads the highest-valued private AI lab in existence.
People on the internet were quick to take a jab at OpenAI:
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The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Greenoaks, Dragoneer, and Sequoia Capital. Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, ICONIQ, and XN co-led the round. Of the $65 billion total, $15 billion represents previously committed investment from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon. Each lead investor put in more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Revenue Growth Driving the Surge
Anthropic’s revenue momentum explains the sharp jump. Run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion this month, climbing from a $380 billion valuation set in February. The Series H money arrives fast on the heels of February’s Series G, when Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation. The valuation has therefore more than doubled in roughly three months.
CFO Krishna Rao said the funding will help the company serve the historic demand it is experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more places where work happens. Anthropic has previously acknowledged it was struggling to serve demand for Claude, telling Fortune its computing infrastructure had been stretched at peak hours. Fresh compute deals with Amazon, Google, Broadcom, and SpaceX aim to fix the capacity shortage behind Claude’s usage limits.
What Comes Next
This is widely expected to be Anthropic’s final private fundraise before going public. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are all expected to go public soon in what could be among the biggest IPOs in history. Anthropic also confirmed its next-generation Mythos AI model is coming soon, alongside the release of Claude Opus 4.8.
Jay R. Ritter, an IPO specialist and emeritus professor at the University of Florida, said Anthropic has generated significant market excitement due to its widespread use for software coding.
“The increase in valuation in a short period of time is unprecedented for a startup, although publicly traded tech companies such as SK Hynix, NVIDIA, and Alphabet have seen even bigger increases, although not as much in percentage terms,” Ritter said, referring to the South Korean and US chip giants, and Google’s parent company.
While it is gaining momentum, Anthropic is also facing legal challenges related to the use of AI in military applications and is discussing cybersecurity with U.S. authorities. The rapid growth of Anthropic underscores the accelerated pace of investments in AI, and the company is approaching the symbolic threshold of $1 trillion, fueling debates about the sustainability of these investments.
