Anthropic, a company specializing in artificial intelligence, announced it has secured $65 billion in private funding. This funding pushes the startup’s valuation to $965 billion. Founded five years ago, Anthropic has quickly become one of the most valuable startups globally. The company is expected to debut on Wall Street soon.
The latest funding round places Anthropic ahead of rival OpenAI both in market valuation and revenue. Anthropic’s annualized revenue now stands at $47 billion. This income comes from selling its AI technology, Claude, which assists people and organizations with coding and various tasks.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI leaders, Anthropic is now in competition with other fast-growing firms like Elon Musk’s SpaceX. All three companies aim to go public, despite current financial losses, raising concerns about an AI bubble. Investment firms Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital, and Sequoia Capital led the latest funding for Anthropic.
This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens,said Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer.
On Thursday, Anthropic also launched its newest AI model, Claude Opus 4.8. The model offers improved coding capabilities and professional task performance over previous versions. Despite its early success with ChatGPT, OpenAI is now catching up to Anthropic.
In March, OpenAI was gearing towards an $852 billion valuation after raising $122 billion. SpaceX, valued at $800 billion last year, saw its value jump to $1.25 trillion following its merger with Musk’s AI-focused company xAI.
Recently, OpenAI cleared a major obstacle on its path to an initial public offering. A federal court dismissed a lawsuit involving Elon Musk, who plans to appeal the decision. Musk also intends to conduct a significant stock sale shortly.
Although Anthropic’s success is notable, the company has faced challenges this year. It engaged in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the military use of AI tools like Claude. In February, President Trump ordered U.S. agencies to cease using Claude, labeling the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic countered this by suing, with the case still active in federal courts.
Anthropic has also been negotiating with the White House concerning cybersecurity capabilities and risks associated with its advanced model, Mythos. The model remains largely unavailable to the public.
Anthropic recently influenced discussions at the Vatican, preceding Pope Leo XIV’s call for stringent AI regulation. His encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” criticized the concentration of power and data in a few private entities, advocating for the developers to focus on common good over profit.