ANTHROPIC
Anthropic closes in on a $1 trillion valuation
Frank Sinatra said “The best revenge is massive success.” And the Amodei siblings just might agree.
Daniela and Dario Amodei were among seven former OpenAI employees who left the lab over safety concerns in 2020. Then the group then turned around to launch Anthropic in 2021.
Now, five years later, Anthropic has surpassed Open AI in the quest to become the world’s most valuable AI startup.
The company behind Claude just raised $65B in a Series H round, which landed them at a $965B post-money valuation. The deal had serious backing - Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia - plus $5B from Amazon already in the bank.
So where does this leave them in the race?
The AI leaderboard:
Anthropic: $65B Series H + $37B jump in revenue run rate from last year (thanks, Claude Code!) brings their valuation to $965B.
OpenAI: A record-breaking $122B raise in March pushed the startup's price tag to $852B.
SpaceXAI: Merging SpaceX with xAI led to a combined worth of $1.25T.
The trillion-dollar question
These three AI leaders are speed racing toward IPO. SpaceXAI already has a prospectus in motion, while OpenAI and Anthropic are close behind. The fact that all three are heading to public markets at the same time, makes this moment pretty historic.
But all of this momentum comes with a bit of tension, especially for Anthropic. The startup built an entire business philosophy on the idea that AI must move at a sustainable pace to ensure maximum safety.
With this AI boom looking like a sprint to Wall Street, it begs the question:
Can slow and steady win the race… or is Anthropic playing a different game entirely?
IPO. Three little letters. A whole lotta competition. - TL