Zoom Ventures' early Anthropic investment has grown 25-fold as the AI startup prepares a $30B funding round co-led by Sequoia, Dragoneer, and Altimeter.
Zoom Video Communications disclosed Friday that its 2023 stake in Anthropic has grown to roughly $1.3 billion, a 25-fold return on the $51 million check the videoconferencing company wrote just three years ago. The timing is pointed: Anthropic is expected to close a new funding round as early as next week.
That round, reported by Yahoo Finance citing a Bloomberg report on a regulatory filing, would value Anthropic at $900 billion. Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Altimeter Capital, and Greenoaks Capital Partners are each expected to contribute $2 billion, with existing investors Founders Fund and General Catalyst also set to participate.
Zoom's entry came through its corporate venture arm, Zoom Ventures, and was framed as a product integration deal. The company planned to embed Anthropic's Claude models into its federated artificial intelligence architecture. The financial upside was real but secondary. Or so it seemed.
The windfall
The regulatory filing reveals a holding now worth nearly $1.3 billion. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said the company experienced 80-fold growth in usage and annualized revenue during the first quarter alone, an expansion that has pushed the startup to aggressively acquire more computing capacity.
That growth rate explains the appetite for fresh capital at a $900 billion ceiling. At that figure, Anthropic would be worth more than most sovereign wealth funds and virtually every publicly traded tech company outside a handful of American giants.
Zoom's own first-quarter numbers arrived the same week. Revenue reached $1.24 billion, up 5.5% year-over-year, with adjusted earnings per share climbing to $1.55 from $1.43. Management raised full-year guidance to adjusted EPS between $5.96 and $6.00 on total revenues of $5.08 to $5.09 billion. The Anthropic return is not operating income, but it reshapes the conversation about what Zoom's balance sheet actually represents.
The broader picture
Zoom is not the only company finding unexpected upside in the artificial intelligence funding boom. Last week, Harbor Capital Advisors filed with the SEC for five exchange-traded funds designed to give public-market investors ecosystem-level exposure to private AI labs, as Crypto Briefing reported. The proposed lineup includes an Anthropic AI Lab ETF and an OpenAI Lab ETF, among others. Because the labs themselves are private, Harbor's approach is to hold publicly traded companies tied to each lab's revenue, supply chain, or partnerships.
Separately, Chinese battery manufacturer CATL is reportedly eyeing a stake in DeepSeek, according to News.az citing The Information. DeepSeek's funding round targets 50 billion yuan ($7.36 billion) and could close in June, which would push the startup's valuation past 350 billion yuan. Industrial companies treating AI lab equity as strategic infrastructure is now a pattern, not an anomaly.
What it means
Corporate venture bets placed in 2023 have, in many cases, delivered returns that dedicated venture funds would envy. Zoom's situation is instructive: the company entered the Anthropic deal as a product partner seeking model integration and exited with a windfall that dwarfs almost any margin improvement it could have engineered operationally.
Timing is the whole story. The Digital Watch Observatory has tracked how AI companies in 2023 were still operating on investor patience and nascent subscription revenue before the current scale inflection. Anyone who wrote a check at that stage, before annualized revenue growth reached 80-fold, captured a window that will not reopen. Harbor's ETF filings signal that retail demand is real, but public-market vehicles wrapped around private-company ecosystems are a structural compromise, not a substitute for early equity.
Zoom still holds its stake and has not signaled plans to sell ahead of Anthropic's new round. The $1.3 billion figure may move again once the financing closes.
FAQ
What was Zoom's original investment in Anthropic?
Zoom invested approximately $51 million in Anthropic in May 2023 through its corporate venture arm, Zoom Ventures, as part of a strategic partnership to integrate Claude models.
What valuation is Anthropic targeting in its new funding round?
Anthropic is seeking to raise up to $30 billion at a company valuation of $900 billion, with the round expected to close as early as next week.
Who is leading Anthropic's new funding round?
Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Altimeter Capital, and Greenoaks Capital Partners are expected to co-lead, each contributing approximately $2 billion, alongside existing backers Founders Fund and General Catalyst.
How did Zoom's core business perform alongside the Anthropic windfall?
Zoom reported Q1 revenue of $1.24 billion, up 5.5% year-over-year, adjusted EPS of $1.55 versus $1.43 the prior year, and raised full-year guidance on both revenue and earnings.