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

Source: TechCrunch

Funding Round

Anthropic has snagged $65 billion in funding at a $965 billion post‑money valuation in its latest Series H round, which may be the AI startup’s last private fundraising before an IPO. The round was co‑led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, and others. Institutional investors including Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D.E. Shaw Ventures, DST Global, and Fidelity Management & Research also participated.

Strategic infrastructure partners—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron—joined the round. A portion of the round ($15 billion) consists of previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon announced in April.

TechCrunch reported last month that Anthropic was close to closing a $50 billion round, with investors clamoring to get on the cap table. One institutional investor pledged as much as $5 billion just to secure a meeting with Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao.

Use of Funds

Anthropic plans to use the new capital to “advance our safety and interpretability research, expand compute to meet growing demand for Claude, and scale the products and partnerships our customers rely on.”

New Model Release

The same day, Anthropic released its new Claude Opus 4.8 model, which touts better capabilities in agentic tasks, advanced coding, and a focus on honesty and self‑correction. The startup is also reportedly planning to more widely launch models on par with its powerful cybersecurity model Mythos, previously released only in limited fashion due to safety concerns.

Financial Performance

Anthropic has seen increased growth since its last funding round, particularly among enterprise customers that rely on Claude Code. The company said its run‑rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month, and The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the startup expects a 130 % revenue surge to bring it to its first operating profit.

“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,” said Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital.

Competitive Landscape

Anthropic is in tight competition with OpenAI for fundraising and user growth ahead of their respective IPOs. OpenAI last raised a whopping $122 billion round in March at an $852 billion post‑money valuation.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX— which merged with xAI earlier this year— is targeting a $2 trillion valuation in its pending IPO and seeking to raise more than $75 billion.