Anthropic raises $65 billion, nears $1T valuation ahead of IPO

Anthropic has secured a staggering $65 billion in funding, catapulting its post-money valuation to $965 billion. This latest investment round may be the AI startup's final private fundraising effort before making its debut on the public markets. The Series H round was co-led by a consortium of prominent investors, including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, and others.

Institutional heavyweights such as Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D.E. Shaw Ventures, DST Global, and Fidelity Management & Research also participated in the round. In a notable show of strategic support, infrastructure partners like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron joined the fray.

A portion of the round – $15 billion – comprises previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including a $5 billion investment from Amazon announced in April. According to reports, Anthropic was close to closing a $50 billion round last month, with investors clamoring to get on board. One institutional investor even pledged as much as $5 billion just to secure a meeting with Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao.

The fresh funds will be used to advance Anthropic's safety and interpretability research, expand compute capabilities to meet growing demand for Claude, and scale products and partnerships that customers rely on. The funding announcement coincides with the release of Anthropic's new Claude Opus 4.8 model, boasting enhanced capabilities in agentic tasks, advanced coding, and a focus on honesty and self-correction. The AI startup is also reportedly planning a wider launch of models rivaling its powerful cybersecurity model Mythos, which has been released in limited fashion due to potential safety concerns.

Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, hailed the development, saying, "Claude's latest advancements have driven large-scale adoption among the world's most demanding organizations. This momentum positions Anthropic to lead the next phase of AI innovation and capture the enormous opportunity ahead." Anthropic's growth has been impressive, particularly among enterprise customers relying on Claude Code. The company revealed that its run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that the startup expects a 130% revenue surge to achieve its first operating profit.

The fundraising landscape for AI startups is heating up, with Anthropic in close competition with OpenAI. OpenAI raised a whopping $122 billion round in March at an $852 billion post-money valuation. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX – which merged with xAI earlier this year – is targeting a $2 trillion valuation in its pending IPO, seeking to raise over $75 billion.