Amid an unprecedented valuation battle between ChatGPT and Anthropic raging in the private markets ahead of their respective IPOs in a few months, Bloomberg reported that shortly after releasing its latest Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic raised $65BN in a funding round that will nearly triple the start-up’s valuation and see it surpass arch-rival OpenAI as the most valuable AI lab.

The Claude chatbot maker wasvalued at $900bn,not including the new investment, as part of the fundraising led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital.

The round comes justthree months after Anthropic raised $30bn in a deal valuing it at $350bnas the popularity of its tools for software developers and workplace customers has propelled extraordinary growth and given it an edge over OpenAI, which was most recently valued at $852bn.

“Claude’s latest advancements have driven large-scale adoption among the world’s most demanding organisations. This momentum positions Anthropic to lead the next phase of AI innovation,” said Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital.

While Anthropic’s run-rate revenue, a metric prefered by start-ups which estimates annual revenues based on short-term performance, crossed $47bn this month, some have expressed skepticism that the number is legitimate, with many suggesting that double counting and even extapolating of outlier is the reason behind the surge.

If true (and things in the press should be taken with grains of salt), this one customer was reported as $6b of ARR for OAI/Anthropic ($500m*12) the month this happened.For reference, that is larger than (checks notes) yup, Snowflake's run-rate revenue as of Q1.😳pic.twitter.com/Dj67m6rUmi

The more than fivefold increase since the start of the year is unprecedented for a start-up its size. It's also most likely bogus, but that will be for the company's new public shareholders to figure out in a few months when the company goes public at an even more ludicrous valuation.

According to the FT, backers are looking to build their stakes in Anthropic ahead of an initial public offering which could come as soon as this year, as OpenAI and SpaceX also race towards public listings. Together, the three companies are expected to have a valuation of ~$3 trillion and will drain an unprecedented amount of liquidity from the market, likely sparking the next market drawdown.

The funding caps an extraordinary period for Anthropic, led by former ChatGPT employee Dario Amodei, when the announcement of its new AI tools has rattled whole sectors of the stock market from wealth managers to cyber security groups.

The power of its Mythos model, which it released to a limited group of trusted partners because of its advanced cyber security capabilities, has prompted concern from governments and financial regulators around the world. On Thursday, Anthropic said it was making progress towards a wider release of Mythos “in the coming weeks”. It also released the latest version of its Claude model, Opus 4.8, which the company said was more “honest” and “more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims”.

Source: ZeroHedge News