Anthropic Bests OpenAI in Valuation Race, Hitting $965B
The two firms have been seesawing in the competition to become the most valuable AI company.
Anthropic, maker of Claude AI, has officially become the world’s most valuable startup after announcing it raised $65 billion in Series H funding at a $965 billion valuation, surpassing chief rival OpenAI, which is currently valued at $852 billion. The new funding ups the ante as the two large language model makers race to go public. Both are reportedly planning IPOs that could rival SpaceX‘s listing later this month, which could value that company at as much as $2 trillion.
Venture capital companies Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital all led the round, which comes just three months after the company’s $30 billion Series G funding round.
Other investors include Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, Iconiq, XN, AMP PBC, Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, DE Shaw Ventures, DST Global, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Insight Partners, Jane Street, Lightspeed, MGX, NTTVC, NX1 Capital, Situational Awareness LP, T. Rowe Price Associates, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, and Temasek. The round also includes $15 billion previously committed by Amazon and other hyperscalers.
Despite raising less cash than OpenAI, Anthropic now claims to be ahead in revenue—an area the two have squabbled over. The Claude maker disclosed Thursday that its annualized revenue crossed $47 billion in May, up from $14 billion in February. Tech and finance publication The Information recently reported that OpenAI’s revenue is around $30 billion.
Anthropic has also prioritized building out its computing capacity through strategic partnerships. Amazon is committing up to 5 gigawatts of AWS compute capacity, while Google and Broadcom have agreed to supply 5 gigawatts of TPU chips. Anthropic has also signed an agreement to access GPU capacity from SpaceX’s Colossus data centers.
In a recently leaked investor memo, OpenAI claimed to be outcompeting Anthropic in the ability to build compute capacity.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on PitchBook.com.
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