Anthropic Raises $65 Billion, Surpasses OpenAI In Valuation Race

Anthropic has raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, taking its post-money valuation to $965 billion and surpassing rival OpenAI in valuation as competition intensifies among leading AI firms.

The new valuation tops OpenAI’s last reported post-money valuation of $852 billion in March and underscores rising investor appetite for companies building advanced artificial intelligence models.

The fresh capital will be used to expand computing infrastructure, meet rising demand for its Claude AI assistant and scale enterprise-focused products, Anthropic said.

Since its last funding round in February, the company said adoption among enterprise customers has continued to accelerate.

“Since our Series G in February, we’ve continued to see adoption grow across global enterprise customers and our run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month,” Anthropic said in a blog post.

According to a report by the Story Board 18, since February, the company’s valuation has more than doubled to over $380 billion, buoyed by strong momentum in the AI space and investor confidence in frontier model developers.

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IPO Plans Advance:

The funding round was led by big-name investment firms such as Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital.

Coatue and ICONIQ were co-leads, with reports saying each lead investor put in more than $2 billion.

The round also included participation from Anthropic’s strategic infrastructure partners, Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix.

The financing package also included $15 billion of previously committed investments from hyperscale technology partners.

Anthropic said that included $5 billion from Amazon as part of an earlier commitment.

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AI Expansion Plans:

In April, Amazon said it might invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic. Amazon cloud infrastructure will see over $100 billion in spending by Anthropic over the next 10 years, adding to a $8 billion prior investment from Amazon.

Alphabet-owned Google also poured in several billion dollars through its earlier pledge to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic over time.

Anthropic’s fundraising comes as it and OpenAI prepare for potential public market listings.

Investors and bankers who know the company say that Anthropic is raising money while also planning its IPO as it looks for more capital to build out its infrastructure and create next-generation AI models.

Anthropic has been facing capacity constraints in recent months, implementing usage caps during busy times and urging clients to shift workloads to off-peak hours.

Anthropic, a 2021 startup founded by former OpenAI employees, makes AI systems for coding, cybersecurity, and enterprise productivity applications.