San Francisco-based AI firm Anthropic has emerged as the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startup after securing a massive $65 billion funding round that pushed its valuation to $965 billion, ahead of rival OpenAI.
The funding marks another milestone in the intensifying AI race, with investors continuing to pour billions into companies building the next generation of AI models and infrastructure. Anthropic said the latest capital infusion comes as demand for its flagship AI assistant Claude accelerates across businesses globally, helping drive its annualised revenue run rate beyond $47 billion earlier this month.
The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, alongside participation from several major institutional investors. According to the company, the new funds will be used to expand computing capacity, advance AI safety and interpretability research, and support the growth of products and partnerships built around Claude.
“Claude is increasingly indispensable to our growing global community of customers, and we work tirelessly to make tools like Claude Code and Cowork more helpful, more powerful, and more adaptable to their needs,” Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said.
The company said it is experiencing unprecedented demand from enterprises and plans to use the investment to strengthen its position at the forefront of AI research and deployment.
“This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens,” Rao added.
How Anthropic plans to expand its AI infrastructure
As part of its expansion strategy, Anthropic is significantly increasing its access to computing resources, which remain critical for training and running advanced AI models.
The company said it has signed agreements with Amazon for up to five gigawatts of new capacity. It has also secured five gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity through partnerships with Google and Broadcom, while reaching arrangements with SpaceX to access GPU capacity through Colossus 1 and Colossus 2.
Claude is currently available through all three major cloud providers: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Investors back Claude’s growing enterprise adoption
Among the notable investors participating in the latest round are AMP PBC, Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield and D.E. Shaw Ventures. Infrastructure partners Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix also joined the investment.
Anthropic expects revenue to reach $10.9 billion, more than double its previous figure, and is projected to report its first operating profit in the June quarter.
Highlighting Claude’s growing role in the corporate world, Alfred Lin, Partner at Sequoia Capital, said companies are increasingly relying on the AI assistant to manage complex business processes.
“Startups and Global 5000 companies alike are deploying Claude to handle complex workflows, and in doing so, Claude is learning how businesses actually operate: the context, the processes, the judgment,” Lin said.
The latest valuation places Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, which raised $122 billion in March at a valuation of $852 billion, underscoring how competition among leading AI companies continues to intensify
