Anthropic announced Thursday that it has raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, valuing the company at $965 billion post-money. This valuation catapults the startup past OpenAI, making it the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence company. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with additional backing from a wide group of global financial and strategic partners. The deal also includes $15 billion in previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon.
The new valuation marks a dramatic shift in the AI landscape. While OpenAI initially captured global attention by targeting everyday consumers with its ChatGPT chatbot, Anthropic built its company by focusing heavily on business infrastructure and software automation. That enterprise-first strategy is paying off at an unprecedented scale. The company revealed that its annualized revenue run rate crossed $47 billion earlier this month. According to The Wall Street Journal, this revenue pace grew 80-fold in the first quarter alone, positioning the startup to potentially lock in an operating profit for the first time.
To keep up with the technical strain of this corporate adoption, Anthropic secured new chip partnerships with Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix. It also signed major infrastructure deals to drastically scale its computing power: five gigawatts of capacity from Amazon, another five gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity from Google and Broadcom, and cutting-edge GPU access via SpaceX’s Colossus data centers. These resources are essential for training and deploying the next generation of large language models.
Global Influence and Geopolitical Friction
Anthropic’s rapid rise to dominance has not occurred in a vacuum. As the company's technical capabilities have expanded, it has found itself thrust directly into global politics, regulatory debates, and high-stakes ethical dilemmas. The startup has positioned itself as a safety-minded organization, which has occasionally put it at odds with government entities.
The company is currently in a legal battle with the Pentagon after refusing to strip out safety safeguards that would allow its Claude model to be used for mass domestic surveillance or lethal autonomous weapons systems. This standoff highlights the tension between AI innovation and national security demands. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah also spoke at the Vatican presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas,” on May 25, underscoring the company’s commitment to ethical AI development.
The Race to the Public Markets
This massive reshuffling of the AI power dynamic sets the stage for a dramatic showdown on Wall Street. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Elon Musk's SpaceX are all currently racing toward anticipated public listings. SpaceX recently published its public offering prospectus, with an initial market debut expected on or around June 12 at a valuation projected to hit $1.75 trillion. Meanwhile, OpenAI is expected to file confidential paperwork for its own initial public offering in the coming weeks.
Anthropic, for its part, has not yet announced formal IPO plans, but the $65 billion Series H suggests the company is building a war chest to compete both in private markets and eventually as a public entity. The company’s focus on enterprise clients and safety-first product design may appeal to institutional investors wary of the risks associated with consumer-facing AI.
Founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, along with other former OpenAI researchers, Anthropic set out to build AI systems that are “helpful, honest, and harmless.” Its flagship model, Claude, has been adopted by enterprises for tasks ranging from software development to compliance monitoring. Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which saw explosive consumer growth, Claude was designed from the ground up with enterprise security and interpretability in mind.
The company’s revenue growth has stunned analysts. An 80-fold increase in quarterly revenue indicates that businesses are not just experimenting with AI but are integrating it into core operations. Analysts at Gartner predict that by 2027, 80% of enterprises will have deployed AI agents in production, and Anthropic appears well-positioned to capture a significant share of that market.
However, Anthropic’s safety-first stance has also created friction. The Pentagon lawsuit is just one example of the ethical tightrope the company walks. In addition to government contracts, Anthropic has been vocal about the need for regulation, even as it benefits from the current free-market AI boom. The company has called for mandatory safety testing of frontier AI models and has voluntarily published its own safety framework.
On the hardware side, the partnerships with chip makers and data center providers are critical. Training cutting-edge models requires massive amounts of energy and specialized silicon. The five gigawatt deals with Amazon and Google will secure the compute power needed for Anthropic’s next-generation models, which are expected to surpass current benchmarks in reasoning and code generation. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus data centers gives Anthropic a unique edge, combining vast GPU clusters with low-latency networking.
Anthropic’s valuation also reflects a broader shift in investor sentiment. Earlier this year, OpenAI was valued at $300 billion, but concerns about its corporate structure and governance have caused some investors to look elsewhere. Anthropic, with its public benefit corporation status and clear mission, has become a safer bet in the eyes of many venture capitalists. Sequoia Capital, which led the Series H, has been one of Anthropic’s earliest and most committed backers.
The company is also expanding its global footprint. In addition to the Vatican engagement, Anthropic has opened offices in London, Tokyo, and Dubai. It is partnering with local universities to research AI safety and is participating in international forums on AI governance. The company’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, testified before the U.S. Congress earlier this year, advocating for a federal AI agency similar to the FDA or FAA.
Yet, challenges remain. Anthropic must navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment in both the U.S. and Europe. The European Union’s AI Act, which came into force earlier this year, imposes strict requirements on high-risk AI systems. Anthropic has expressed support for the Act but has also warned that overly restrictive regulations could stifle innovation. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into pricing practices among AI startups, though no action has been taken against Anthropic specifically.
The race to IPO will test whether Anthropic can maintain its growth trajectory under the scrutiny of public markets. Analysts expect the company to file for an IPO sometime in 2027, but the current valuation suggests that investors are already pricing in a high-growth future. The public listing of SpaceX next month will be closely watched as a bellwether for the tech IPO market.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is not standing still. The company recently launched its GPT-5 model, which boasts multi-modal capabilities and lower inference costs. It has also struck deals with media companies to license content for training. Anthropic’s Claude, in contrast, relies on carefully curated datasets to avoid bias and harmful outputs. Both companies are investing heavily in proprietary training data, but Anthropic’s safety filters sometimes limit the model’s performance in certain creative tasks.
Industry observers point out that the AI landscape is still evolving rapidly. New entrants like Elon Musk’s xAI and French startup Mistral are also competing for enterprise customers and data center capacity. Anthropic’s decision to partner with SpaceX on GPU access may be a sign of deepening ties between the two Musk-backed entities, though the relationship remains arms-length.
On the geopolitical front, Anthropic has been cautious about expanding into China or other tightly controlled markets. The company has declined to sell its models to state-owned enterprises in countries with poor human rights records, a stance that has won praise from human rights organizations but has also limited potential revenue. In contrast, OpenAI has licensed its technology to companies in China under strict conditions.
Anthropic’s revenue model is based on per-token pricing for API access, with tiered plans for different enterprise sizes. The company’s most expensive tier offers dedicated compute instances and priority support. It also sells pre-trained models for on-premises deployment, which is popular among financial institutions and healthcare providers that cannot send data to the cloud. This hybrid approach has helped Anthropic win contracts with JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth Group, and the Department of Defense — the latter before the current legal battle.
The Pentagon lawsuit stems from Anthropic’s refusal to remove “constitutional AI” safeguards built into Claude. These safeguards prevent the model from generating instructions for surveillance or lethal weapons, even when prompted by authority figures. The Pentagon argues that in national security contexts, such safeguards must be bypassable. Anthropic counters that doing so would violate its core mission. The case is expected to go to trial next year.
Anthropic’s participation at the Vatican highlighted another dimension of its global influence. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical “Magnifica humanitas” calls for AI to be developed in service of human dignity. Chris Olah’s speech at St. Peter’s Square was seen as a validation of Anthropic’s safety-first philosophy. The company has since donated an undisclosed amount to Vatican-affiliated AI ethics research centers.
As the AI industry matures, the race for valuations and revenue will likely intensify. Anthropic’s $965 billion valuation makes it one of the most valuable private companies in history, but it also raises expectations. The company will need to continue innovating while navigating legal, regulatory, and ethical challenges. Its leadership team, a mix of researchers and business veterans, appears committed to staying the course. The next few months, with SpaceX’s IPO and OpenAI’s filing, will reveal whether the AI boom has more room to run.
Source: eWeek News