Anthropic surpasses Open AI with massive $965 billion valuation as AI race intensifies

Anthropic announced on Thursday (May 28) that it has raised $65 billion in a fresh funding round, pushing the company’s valuation to an eye-popping $965 billion, surpassing rival OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The latest investment round cements Anthropic’s position as one of the most influential companies in the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence industry. The startup, led by former OpenAI executive Dario Amodei, has earned recognition for its advanced coding capabilities and cutting-edge AI models.

Anthropic’s rapid rise has largely been driven by its focus on enterprise AI solutions rather than consumer-facing products, a strategy that differs from the path initially taken by OpenAI. Founded by former OpenAI employees, including CEO Amodei, Anthropic has also built its reputation around AI safety while aggressively developing new technologies to remain competitive in the global AI race. “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.

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Anthropic’s near-trillion-dollar valuation now places it ahead of OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in March. Industry observers believe both companies could pursue public listings as early as this year. Ahead of both firms, SpaceX, which absorbed xAI earlier this year, could begin trading publicly as soon as June 12, targeting a valuation of around $1.75 trillion in what could become the largest IPO in history.

The funding round was led by prominent Silicon Valley investors, including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. Anthropic also secured $15 billion in previously committed investments from major cloud computing companies, including $5 billion from Amazon. Chipmakers Micron Technology, Samsung, and SK hynix joined the round as strategic infrastructure partners, reflecting the growing importance of semiconductor companies in powering AI development.

The company said Claude has become the first frontier AI model available across the world’s three largest cloud platforms, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. The fundraising comes as Anthropic faces a major legal dispute with the Pentagon. The company has sued the US Defense Department after being labelled a supply chain risk, a designation Anthropic argues was unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to provide the military with unrestricted access to its AI systems. Anthropic’s next-generation AI model, Mythos, has reportedly demonstrated unprecedented cybersecurity capabilities. Due to those concerns, the company has restricted access to select security partners instead of making the model publicly available.