Anthropic eclipsed OpenAI as the world's most valuable AI company Thursday, closing a $65 billion Series H that values the Claude maker at $965 billion and doing it in half the time it took its rival to reach a similar mark. The five-year-old startup now sits at a post-money valuation $113 billion above OpenAI's $852 billion March round, according to the Straits Times. The New York Times noted Anthropic reached this level in roughly half the time OpenAI took, a reflection of how quickly the AI pecking order is shifting.
Anthropic's revenue run rate crossed $47 billion this month, Forbes reported, driven by enterprise demand for Claude. The company doubled its valuation from the $380 billion it commanded in a February round, when it raised $30 billion.
Claude is also eating into ChatGPT's consumer dominance. SensorTower data shows Claude accounted for 14% of global AI app downloads in Q2 2026, up from just 1% in each quarter last year.
ChatGPT's share dropped to 47% from 67% in the same period last year. The funding round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. It included $15 billion in previously committed cloud investments, with Amazon contributing $5 billion.
Semiconductor firms Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix joined as strategic infrastructure partners.
Anthropic also launched Claude Opus 4.8 on Thursday, touting improvements in coding and professional work. The model is priced the same as its predecessor and shows gains in honesty.
Early testers say it flags uncertainties more often and makes fewer unsupported claims.
"The general problem with AI models is that they sometimes jump to conclusions, confidently claiming to have made progress in their work despite the evidence being thin," Anthropic said. The company is already teasing its next-generation Mythos model, a large language model with advanced cybersecurity capabilities that has drawn concern from executives and world leaders. Mythos is part of Project Glasswing, which permits Amazon, Microsoft and Apple to use it for cybersecurity purposes.
Anthropic said it aims to release Mythos to all customers in the coming weeks.
Claude is now the first frontier AI model available across all three major cloud platforms: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. The valuation milestone comes amid legal battles. Anthropic is fighting a Pentagon designation as a supply chain risk, a move CEO Dario Amodei called retaliation after the company refused to grant the military unrestricted access to its models. The dispute is working through two federal courts. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the company a supply chain risk after a public clash with Amodei.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public as early as 2026. Elon Musk's SpaceX, which merged with xAI in February, could begin trading as soon as June 12 with a target valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion, which would mark the largest IPO in history.
