Anthropic dethrones OpenAI in historic rise to $965 billion valuation
While OpenAI struggles to stay on top, Anthropic has just made a historic leap: it has become the world's most valuable startup after closing a $65 billion round backed by Amazon and major cloud service providers.
Anthropic's logo on a device-File Image.
In one of the largest private funding rounds in tech history, Anthropic has surpassed its main rival, OpenAI, as the world's most valuable artificial intelligence and startup. The company that created Claude closed a Series H for $65 billion, reaching a post-money valuation of $965 billion.
This milestone further cements Anthropic’s dizzying rise in the highly competitive Generative AI market and underscores investors’ strong confidence in the company’s focus on safety, research and enterprise adoption.
Details of the funding round
Axios reported that the Series H was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. The round includes $15 billion of previously committed investments by cloud service providers, including $5 billion from Amazon.
According to Anthropic's official statement, the funds will go to:
- Research in security and model interpretability.
- Expansion of computational capacity.
- Claude product scaling and new business partnerships.
Explosive revenue growth
One of the pillars justifying this record valuation is the company's financial performance. Anthropic reported annualized revenues of $47 billion at the beginning of May 2026, up dramatically from $9 billion at the end of 2025.
This growth is driven primarily by enterprise adoption of its Claude models, especially in advanced programming and reasoning.
Competitive context and track record
With this deal, Anthropic leaves behind OpenAI, which at its last valuation hovered around $730-852 billion.
Recent valuation performance of Anthropic:
- February 2026:$380 billion ($30 billion Series G).
- April-May 2026: Negotiations around $900-950 billion.
- May 2026: $965 billion (Series H).
Strategic investors such as Google (up to $40 billion committed) and Amazon continue to back the company heavily, allowing it to compete on infrastructure and model development.
What does this mean for the sector?
Analysts see this deal as possibly Anthropic's last big private round before a potential IPO.
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