Anthropic Hits $900B Valuation, Overtaking OpenAI as Most Valuable AI Startup

📖 5 min read

Anthropic is closing a funding round this week that values it above $900 billion – officially overtaking OpenAI to become the most valuable private AI company on the planet. The round is expected to top $30 billion. Bloomberg broke the story on May 23, and as of today the commitments are still being finalized but are described as tracking above the $30 billion target.

To put this in perspective: Anthropic was worth $61.5 billion just 14 months ago. This week’s round would represent a 14x increase in valuation in just over a year.

The Numbers Behind the Round

Four firms are co-leading the raise – Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Altimeter Capital, and Greenoaks Capital Partners – each contributing roughly $2 billion. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and General Catalyst are also participating as existing investors. The deal reportedly came together within weeks of Anthropic receiving unsolicited inbound proposals from investors in late April 2026.

Date	Round	Amount Raised	Valuation
March 2025	Series E	~$3.5B	$61.5B
September 2025	Series F	~$6B	$183B
February 2026	Series G	$30B	$380B
May 2026 (pending)	Series H	$30B+	$900B+

For comparison, OpenAI’s most recent valuation was $852 billion, set during a $122 billion funding round completed in March 2026. Anthropic’s new number makes it the first AI startup to approach the $1 trillion mark in private markets.

What’s Driving the Valuation Jump

The short answer is revenue. Anthropic’s annualized run-rate revenue is now exceeding $30 billion, according to sources cited in multiple Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal reports. That puts its price-to-revenue ratio at roughly 30x – aggressive, but not unusual for a company growing this fast in a market where infrastructure spending continues to explode.

The company has been aggressively locking in compute deals to support that growth:

• SpaceX deal: Anthropic committed to paying nearly $45 billion over three years for computing capacity to run Claude. The deal includes a 3-month cancellation clause, giving Anthropic some flexibility if AI hardware costs continue to fall.
• Akamai deal: A $1.8 billion cloud computing agreement with Akamai Technologies to expand model capacity and delivery infrastructure.
• xAI deal: An arrangement to use Elon Musk’s Colossus 1 data center for additional compute – an unusual partnership given the competitive landscape.

The SpaceX deal alone is worth noting: $45 billion is more than Anthropic’s entire valuation as recently as 2024. It reflects how capital-intensive the frontier AI race has become.

Anthropic vs. OpenAI: The Numbers Side by Side

Metric	Anthropic	OpenAI
Current valuation	~$900B (pending)	$852B (March 2026)
Run-rate revenue	$30B+	~$11.6B (last reported)
Founded	2021 (ex-OpenAI team)	2015
IPO timeline	Fall 2026 (expected)	Fall 2026 (expected)
Main product	Claude (Claude Code, Claude.ai)	ChatGPT, GPT-4o, o3

The revenue gap is the most striking part. Anthropic’s $30B+ run rate is nearly 3x OpenAI’s last reported number. Much of that comes from Claude’s enterprise adoption and, increasingly, Claude Code – which has become a go-to tool for software developers and is believed to be one of Anthropic’s fastest-growing revenue lines.

Why It Matters Outside the AI World

The $900 billion figure is not just a tech story. It signals that private markets are now treating frontier AI companies like infrastructure – similar to how cloud computing giants were valued in the 2010s. The last two Anthropic rounds alone ($30 billion in February, $30+ billion now) represent more capital raised in 3 months than most industries raise in a decade.

It also matters for ordinary users. More capital means more compute, faster model improvements, and – in theory – more price competition. DeepSeek’s recent 75% price cut on its V4-Pro model has already pushed other providers to respond. Anthropic sitting on $30B+ in fresh capital gives it room to invest in cheaper inference, which would benefit anyone using Claude via API or third-party apps.

The IPO angle is also real. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public as early as fall 2026. Whoever lists first at a higher valuation sets the benchmark – and right now, Anthropic appears to have the lead.

The Caveats

A few things worth keeping in mind before reading this as pure triumphalism:

• The round isn’t closed yet. Bloomberg noted the commitments are still being finalized and terms could change. $900 billion is a target, not a confirmed number.
• Valuation is not profit. Anthropic’s compute spend alone is extraordinary – $45 billion committed to SpaceX over 3 years is roughly $15 billion per year just for one infrastructure partner. Profitability timelines remain unclear.
• Private market valuations are illiquid. These numbers reflect what sophisticated investors will pay for preferred shares with downside protection, not necessarily what public market investors would pay.
• Competition is relentless. Google released Gemini 3.5 and the new “Spark” agent platform at I/O last week. Meta continues to release powerful open-source models. The gap between Anthropic’s Claude and its competitors has narrowed significantly over the past 12 months.

BetOnAI Verdict

This is a genuine milestone, not just a press release. Anthropic crossing $900 billion in private valuation – driven by $30+ billion in annual revenue – is real evidence that the Claude product is monetizing at a scale that was hard to imagine two years ago. The company went from $61.5 billion to nearly $1 trillion in 14 months. That trajectory is hard to argue with.

The risk is on the cost side. Anthropic is spending aggressively on compute – $45 billion to SpaceX alone – and frontier model training costs are not falling as fast as inference costs. The path to profitability at this valuation multiple is not obvious.

If you’re an enterprise considering Claude for your stack: this round likely means better uptime, faster model iterations, and lower prices within the next 12 months as Anthropic converts capital into capacity. If you’re watching the IPO race: Anthropic currently has the edge, but OpenAI won’t concede without a fight. Fall 2026 is shaping up to be one of the most significant tech IPO windows since 2012.

Bottom line: Anthropic is the new leader in the private AI valuation race. Whether that translates to public market dominance depends on what happens between now and IPO day.

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Sources

• Bloomberg via Business Standard – Anthropic set to close over $30 billion round (May 23, 2026)
• Analytics Drift – Anthropic Is Now Worth More Than OpenAI (May 26, 2026)
• Yahoo Finance – Anthropic secures $45bn SpaceX deal for Claude AI computing power
• Economic Times – Anthropic signs $1.8 billion AI cloud deal with Akamai
• FinanceFeeds – Anthropic $900B vs OpenAI $852B: who lists the trillion first?