Anthropic vaults to a $965 billion valuation with new funding as Claude demand surges

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic said Thursday it raised $65 billion in private funding that will push its valuation to $965 billion, a whopping number that makes the five-year-old maker of the Claude chatbot one of the world's most valuable startups as it careens toward a likely Wall Street debut.

The announcement vaults Anthropic ahead of its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, both in market value and in reported revenue. Anthropic said it's now making annualized revenue of $47 billion from selling its technology to people and organizations using Claude to write code and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf.

Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk's rocket and AI company SpaceX, are all expected to become publicly traded. All three are also still losing more money than they make, fueling concerns of an AI bubble.

Anthropic said the new round of funding was led by investment firms Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital and Sequoia Capital.

“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 a written statement from Anthropic's chief financial officer, Krishna Rao.

Anthropic also on Thursday launched its newest AI model, called Claude Opus 4.8, boasting that it is even better at coding and other professional work than previous models.

OpenAI last reported in March it was heading toward a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion fundraising round. SpaceX was valued at $800 billion last year, but its value grew to $1.25 trillion after the space exploration company merged with Musk's xAI in February.