Anthropic has raised $65 billion in a funding round that values the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company at $965 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI on a key market metric for the first time, according to Bloomberg and other reports. The deal makes Anthropic the most valuable private AI startup just as both companies are moving closer to public listings.
Bloomberg reported that the round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, with each of the lead investors contributing more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The investment pushes Anthropic’s valuation to nearly $1 trillion, surpassing OpenAI’s most recent private-market value, which Bloomberg said had been above $700 billion earlier this spring.
The milestone matters because the two companies are widely seen as the leading rivals in the AI race, competing for enterprise customers, talent and investor attention. Anthropic’s rise in valuation comes amid intense enthusiasm for artificial intelligence models and the infrastructure behind them, and it signals that investors are currently assigning even greater value to Anthropic’s growth prospects than to OpenAI’s.
OpenAI, meanwhile, has been preparing for a possible initial public offering and has discussed adding Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to its bank lineup for that process, according to Bloomberg. That suggests both companies are entering a new phase in which private-market valuations, fundraising and IPO planning are becoming closely linked.
Fast Company also reported that Anthropic is nearing the $1 trillion mark and that the company’s new valuation comes as the two AI leaders head toward potential public offerings. Bloomberg’s reporting indicated that Anthropic and OpenAI could be eyeing IPOs as soon as this fall, though neither company has publicly set a timetable.
The new valuation underscores how quickly the AI market has evolved. Anthropic, best known for its Claude chatbot, has gone from a much smaller startup to a company valued at almost a trillion dollars, while OpenAI remains one of the sector’s most prominent players. What happens next will depend on whether these companies can sustain their growth and whether investor demand remains strong enough to support eventual public-market debuts.
