Anthropic closed a $65B Series H round at a $965B valuation on Thursday, surpassing OpenAI and reporting a $47B annualized revenue run rate.
Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H round Thursday at a $965 billion post-money valuation, surpassing OpenAI to become the most valuable artificial intelligence startup in the world. The company nearly tripled its February valuation of $380 billion in roughly three months.
The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, and included $15 billion of previously committed investments, among them a $5 billion check from Amazon. CNBC had reported in late April that talks were underway. OpenAI held the top spot after closing a record $122 billion round in late March at an $852 billion valuation. That lead lasted less than two months.
The revenue story
The fundraise lands alongside numbers that explain investor appetite. Anthropic disclosed a $47 billion annualized revenue run rate on Thursday, up from $30 billion earlier this year and $10 billion for all of last year. That is roughly a five-fold increase in roughly 18 months, driven largely by enterprise adoption of Claude Code, the company's AI coding assistant.
CFO Krishna Rao credited Claude's expanding role inside enterprise workflows for the surge. Yahoo Finance reported the assistant is now embedded in accounting, forecasting, tax, audit and operational finance processes at large companies. Rao said in Thursday's press release that the new capital will go toward compute infrastructure, product scaling and safety research.
Compute scarcity shapes strategy at both leading labs. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar recently described a "vertical wall of demand" for compute, noting that "there's not a lot of compute in 2026." Anthropic's spending plans signal the same constraint, and the race to lock in capacity is now a defining variable for every major player.
New models, restricted access
Thursday also brought two product disclosures. Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 and unveiled Claude Mythos Preview, a model with advanced cybersecurity capabilities currently limited to a select group of vetted enterprise customers.
The Mythos release carries geopolitical weight. Shacknews noted that Anthropic remains blacklisted from US military contracts after declining to strip safety guardrails from its models for government use, and a lawsuit over that blacklisting is still active. Rolling out a cybersecurity-focused model to commercial customers while the government access dispute is unresolved is a carefully calibrated position.
What this valuation race costs
No clean historical precedent exists for the artificial intelligence funding cycle at this scale. The cloud infrastructure buildout of the 2010s is the closest analogue: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud each committed tens of billions before the economics stabilized. AI model providers claim higher gross margins than infrastructure sellers, but their compute bills function like capex. Whether the underlying unit economics justify current valuations remains an open question.
The combined paper value of Anthropic and OpenAI now exceeds $1.8 trillion, more than the market capitalization of most Fortune 50 companies. Neither is publicly traded. Both are spending aggressively, and both are reporting revenue growth that, if sustained, would justify the burn.
CNBC noted that leading model makers are preparing for public offerings. Anthropic's decision to publish a revenue run rate alongside this funding close is a signal that IPO preparation may be further along than the company has acknowledged.
At $965 billion with revenue growing at a credible pace, the question is not whether Anthropic will file. It is whether the valuation will cross a trillion dollars before it does.
Frequently asked questions
What is Anthropic's current valuation?
After Thursday's Series H close, Anthropic is valued at $965 billion, making it the most valuable private artificial intelligence company in the world, ahead of OpenAI and xAI.
How did Anthropic surpass OpenAI so quickly?
OpenAI reached an $852 billion valuation in late March 2026 after closing a $122 billion round. Anthropic's $65 billion raise at $965 billion eclipsed that figure in under two months, fueled by rapid revenue growth.
What is Claude Code and why does it matter?
Claude Code is Anthropic's AI coding assistant and its fastest-growing product line. Annualized revenue rose from roughly $10 billion last year to a $47 billion run rate by May 2026, with Claude Code cited as a primary driver of that growth.
Is Anthropic planning an IPO?
The company has not announced a public offering, but its revenue disclosures and round structure are consistent with pre-IPO housekeeping at large private technology companies.