Anthropic, the US AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has raised $30bn (\u00a322bn) in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380bn.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s previous funding round in September achieved a value of $183bn, with further improvements in the technology since then spurring even greater investor interest.<\/p>\n
The fundraising was announced amid a series of stock market moves against industries that face disruption from the latest models, including software, trucking and logistics<\/a>, wealth management<\/a> and commercial property services<\/a>.<\/p>\n The funding round, led by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and the hedge fund Coatue Management, is among the largest private fundraising deals on record.<\/p>\n \u201cAnthropic is the clear category leader in enterprise AI,\u201d said Choo Yong Cheen, the chief investment officer of private equity at GIC.<\/p>\n Anthropic said its annualised revenue \u2013 an estimate of full-year sales based on recent company data \u2013 had reached $14bn, having grown more than tenfold in each of the past three years. A significant driver of recent growth has been Claude Code, the company\u2019s AI-powered coding tool that became generally available in May 2025.<\/p>\n Anthropic\u2019s rival OpenAI, backed by Microsoft and SoftBank, has been assembling what is reportedly a far larger round of up to $100bn that would value the ChatGPT developer at about $830bn.<\/p>\n The staggering sums being raised reflect equally staggering burn rates, with the companies spending cash to cover their huge costs of computing and attracting researcher talent.<\/p>\n Anthropic has forecast reducing its cash burn to roughly a third of revenue in 2026 and just 9% by 2027, with a break-even target of 2028 \u2013 two years ahead of its rival, according to reports. Both companies are widely expected to pursue initial public offerings in the second half of 2026.<\/p>\n The rapid valuation increases for leading AI startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI, whose price tags far exceed those of many of the US\u2019s largest listed companies<\/a>, has alarmed some observers. Last year, a leading British tech investor, James Anderson, said he found sharp increases in valuations of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic \u201cdisconcerting\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n Some listed firms at the forefront of the AI industry have also come under stock market pressure in recent days.<\/p>\n