Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude family of models, just raised $65 billion in fresh funding.
That puts its valuation at a staggering $965 billion, nearly a trillion dollars. And experts say this could be the last time the company raises money as a private company before going public.
The round closed on May 28, 2026, the same day Anthropic dropped its newest model, Claude Opus 4.8.
Big-Money Investors
The funding round, called a Series H, attracted some of the biggest names in finance. Altimeter Capital and Sequoia Capital co-led the round.
They were joined by Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Capital Group, Coatue, and D1 Capital Partners, among others.
Major institutional players also chipped in. Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D.E. Shaw Ventures, DST Global, and Fidelity Management & Research all participated.
Even hardware companies (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) joined as strategic infrastructure partners.
Fifteen billion dollars of the total came from previously committed investments. Amazon alone contributed $5 billion of that, a deal announced back in April.
Desperate Investors
Just last month, TechCrunch reported that Anthropic was close to wrapping a $50 billion round. The final number blew past that.
Demand was so intense that one institutional investor reportedly offered $5 billion just to get a meeting with Anthropic’s CFO, Krishna Rao.
Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, explained that Claude’s recent advances have led to widespread adoption among the world’s most demanding organizations.
He believes Anthropic is now positioned to lead the next wave of AI innovation.
Numbers
This isn’t a company burning cash with nothing to show for it. Anthropic crossed $47 billion in annualized run rate revenue earlier in May 2026.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported the company expects a 130% revenue surge, enough to push it into its first-ever operating profit.
The big driver is enterprise customers who rely on Claude Code. Developers and large organizations have adopted it heavily for complex coding tasks.
That’s been a major growth engine.
Anthropic’s Plans
Anthropic says it will put the funds to work in three main areas. First, the company wants to advance its safety and interpretability research.
Second, it plans to expand computing power to handle the rising demand for Claude. Third, it aims to scale up the products and partnerships its customers already depend on.
Safety has always been central to Anthropic’s mission. The company was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers who wanted to build AI with a stronger focus on responsible development.
Also read: Anthropic Just Dethroned OpenAI
Brand-New Model
The company simultaneously launched Claude Opus 4.8 alongside funding plans. The new model focuses on agentic tasks, work where the AI takes sequences of actions, not just a single response.
It also brings stronger coding capabilities and a sharper emphasis on honesty and self-correction.
On top of that, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic plans to more widely release models on par with Mythos, its powerful cybersecurity-focused model.
So far, the company has kept Mythos limited due to safety concerns. A wider release could signal a new phase in the company’s product strategy.
Race to IPO
OpenAI, Anthropic’s most direct rival, raised a massive $122 billion round in March 2026 at an $852 billion valuation.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which merged with his AI venture xAI earlier this year, is targeting a $2 trillion valuation in its own pending IPO. SpaceX is also looking to raise more than $75 billion.
Anthropic sits at nearly $1 trillion. OpenAI trails slightly in valuation but leads in total funds raised. And xAI, backed by Musk’s celebrity and ambition, is aiming even higher.
