UPDATE: Anthropic Closes $30B Round at $900B, Tops OpenAI

The story that broke at the start of May is now landing. Anthropic is finalizing a $30 billion funding round at a pre-money valuation north of $900 billion, with the deal expected to close as soon as this week, according to reporting from Bloomberg and confirmed by multiple investors familiar with the talks. If it closes at those numbers, Anthropic will pass OpenAI's March valuation of $852 billion and become the most valuable private AI company in the world.

This is Anthropic's second $30 billion raise inside a single calendar year — and the one that finally moves the title belt.

What Changed Since Early May

When Bloomberg first reported the round on May 12, the headline was that Anthropic was "in talks" at a $900 billion valuation. At that point, no term sheet had been signed and the deal was characterized as still being shaped. Three weeks later, the reporting has shifted from "considering" to "closing as soon as next week."

The round is co-led by Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Altimeter Capital and Greenoaks Capital Partners. Each of the four lead firms is expected to invest roughly $2 billion. Existing investors are also stepping back in, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and General Catalyst.

For Anthropic, this is a stunning compression. The company closed a $30 billion Series G in February 2026 at a $380 billion post-money valuation. Three months later, it's raising another $30 billion at more than double that price. Run-rate revenue moved from $14 billion in February to roughly $30 billion in April. The valuation is tracking the revenue.

The OpenAI Crossover

The headline number — $900 billion — matters mostly because of one comparison. OpenAI's last valuation, set in March 2026, was $852 billion. If Anthropic closes above $900 billion this week, it becomes the more valuable of the two for the first time since the AI race began.

Why this matters: for nearly the entire history of modern AI, OpenAI has been the reference price. Every other lab was measured as a fraction or multiple of whatever OpenAI was worth. That anchor is about to move.

The crossover isn't a fluke. Anthropic's Q2 numbers came in last week showing $10.9 billion in revenue and the company's first quarterly operating profit ever — a milestone OpenAI has not yet reported. Enterprise adoption data published earlier this month showed Anthropic overtaking OpenAI in business AI usage, with Claude winning new logos faster than GPT in the categories Anthropic targets hardest: coding, legal, financial services.

What Investors Are Buying

At $900 billion, investors are paying roughly 30x current run-rate revenue. That's expensive by any traditional yardstick, but the bet is structurally simple. Anthropic's revenue is doubling roughly every quarter. If the company gets to a $60 billion run rate by year-end, the multiple compresses fast.

There's also a strategic story. Anthropic has been winning the parts of the enterprise market that pay the most: regulated industries, large contracts with measurable productivity gains, and developer tools. Claude Code alone has been cited internally as one of the fastest revenue lines Anthropic has ever shipped.

The investor logic boils down to: even if the multiple looks frothy today, the addressable market keeps expanding faster than the price.

What the Money Is For

Anthropic hasn't disclosed the full use-of-proceeds yet, but the trajectory is clear from existing commitments. The company has signed a $200 billion cloud and TPU agreement with Google, a 3.5-gigawatt TPU deal involving Broadcom, and a $1.25 billion monthly compute arrangement with SpaceX's Colossus 2 supercomputer. Those bills don't pay themselves.

Compute is the dominant cost line, and it's growing roughly in lock-step with revenue. Pretraining the next generation of Claude models — including a successor expected to land later in 2026 — is part of where the new capital is going. Anthropic has also been investing heavily in safety research and the recently launched Claude Agent SDK, both of which require sustained R&D budgets that don't show up as revenue for quarters at a time.

The company is also hiring at a pace that requires deep pockets. The recent additions of Andrej Karpathy to the pretraining team and the Stainless acquisition for SDK and MCP developer tooling are part of a broader buildout.

Industry Reaction

Among investors, the reaction has been a mix of awe and resignation. One Sequoia partner told Bloomberg that the round was oversubscribed within days. Multiple sovereign wealth funds reportedly tried to get into the round and were turned away because the lead investors wanted to keep ownership concentrated.

The pricing also resets expectations for everyone downstream. Cohere, Mistral, xAI, and the various second-tier labs are now negotiating their next rounds with a new ceiling overhead. If Anthropic is worth $900 billion, the math on a $50 billion or $100 billion AI lab looks different.

OpenAI hasn't publicly commented on being overtaken, but is widely expected to respond with its own up-round. The company has been preparing an IPO filing, and the valuation gap may accelerate that timeline.

What's Next

If reporting holds, the deal closes by the end of this week. The term sheet has been negotiated; the only remaining steps are the final signatures and the wire. Anthropic will then formally rank as the world's most valuable AI startup.

Expect a flurry of follow-on activity. Secondary share sales from early Anthropic employees will reprice at the new mark. Other labs will reset their fundraising plans. And OpenAI's response — whether through an IPO, a new private round, or a public valuation event — is now the next thing to watch.

Bottom Line

The May 1 story was that Anthropic might surpass OpenAI. The May 25 story is that it's happening this week. The new pecking order in private AI is being set in real time — and the company writing the cheque on top is the one shipping the most enterprise revenue.