Anthropic Hits $965B Valuation as AI Funding War Accelerates
Anthropic raised $65B in a Series H round that values the company at $965B. The raise makes it the most valuable AI startup in the world, surpassing rival OpenAI for the first time.
OpenAI had held that distinction after closing a $122B round in March at an $852B post-money valuation.
Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital co-led the round. Blackstone, DST Global, and D.E. Shaw Ventures joined as institutional participants.
Strategic partners Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron also joined. $15B of the total came from previously committed investments, including $5B from Amazon announced in April.
The deal came together in a matter of weeks, a sign of strong investor demand, per Bloomberg.
In late April, Anthropic had been weighing financing at a valuation above $900B after receiving several unsolicited proposals from investors.
The company's annualized run rate revenue stood at $4B in July 2025. It's on pace to surpass $50B by the end of June, per Bloomberg.
It also expects to post $10.9B in Q2 revenue, more than doubling from the prior three-month period. The company is tracking toward its first profitable quarter.
"Claude's latest advancements have driven large-scale adoption among the world's most demanding organizations," said Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital.
New Model, Unresolved Safety Questions
On the same day as the funding announcement, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8. It's a new version of its large language model with improved coding, reasoning, and general knowledge capabilities.
The company called it a "modest but tangible improvement" on its predecessor.
A new "effort control" feature lets users adjust how much computing power the model applies to a given task. This gives developers a way to manage Claude Code spending more carefully.
The fast mode on Opus 4.8 is three times cheaper than previous model versions, per Business Insider.
The release is not Mythos, Anthropic's more capable cybersecurity model that remains withheld due to safety concerns.
The company said in April that Mythos was significantly better than past models at finding exploitable vulnerabilities, prompting concern across the cybersecurity community.
Anthropic said it expects to make Mythos-class capabilities available to all customers within the coming weeks as it finishes developing the necessary safeguards.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public as soon as this fall.
Anthropic's valuation has risen from $380B in February to $965B. Its revenue run rate has grown more than tenfold since mid-2025.
