Anthropics valuation surges to $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI
May 28 (Reuters) – Anthropic said on Thursday it has raised $65 billion at a post-money valuation of $965 billion as it aims to strengthen its computing capacity to meet growing demand for its chatbot Claude and scale its products.
The new valuation, following its series H funding round, puts Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, which was last valued at $852 billion post-money in March, intensifying a fierce battle between the two for dominance in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence sector.
Anthropic’s valuation has more than doubled from $380 billion in February; This reflects its rapid rise as a leading competitor in the AI race and intense investor demand for shares in leading companies.
“Adoption among global enterprise customers has continued to grow since our G series in February, with our run rate exceeding $47 billion at the beginning of this month,” Anthropic said in a blog.
Anthropic’s pursuit of private financing dovetails with its preparations for an initial public offering, according to investors and bankers familiar with the company.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI plan to tap the public market, possibly as soon as this year, to obtain the computational resources needed to power their services and train new models.
Anthropic has struggled to keep up with demand in recent months, forcing it to set usage limits during peak hours and encourage off-peak usage by offering more computing during that time.
Its latest round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital; Coatue and ICONIQ, among others, became joint leaders.
Anthropic’s strategic infrastructure partners Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix also participated in the round, which comprised $15 billion in previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon.
Amazon announced in April that it would invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic; AI startup Amazon has pledged to spend more than $100 billion on cloud technologies over the next 10 years. This is in addition to Amazon’s previous $8 billion investment.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)
