Anthropic has secured $65 billion in funding at a post-money valuation of $965 billion in its most recent investment round, which may be the AI company's final private fundraising effort before it goes public. The Series H round was jointly led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, and several other firms. Institutional investors such as Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D. E. Shaw Ventures, DST Global, and Fidelity Management & Research also took part. Strategic infrastructure partners, including Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, joined the round as well. A portion of the funding—$15 billion—consists of previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon announced in April. One institutional investor reportedly pledged as much as $5 billion just to secure a meeting with Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao. Anthropic plans to use the new capital to "advance our safety and interpretability research, expand compute to meet growing demand for Claude, and scale the products and partnerships our customers rely on."

The funding announcement coincides with the release of Anthropic's new Claude Opus 4.8 model, which boasts enhanced capabilities in agentic tasks, advanced coding, and a focus on honesty and self-correction. The AI startup is also reportedly planning a broader launch of models that match the power of its cybersecurity model Mythos, which has only been released in a limited capacity due to potential safety concerns. Since its last funding round, Anthropic has experienced significant growth, especially among enterprise customers using Claude Code. The company reported that its run rate revenue surpassed $47 billion earlier this month, and The Wall Street Journal recently indicated that the startup expects a 130% revenue increase to reach its first operating profit. "Claude's latest advancements have driven large-scale adoption among the world's most demanding organizations. This momentum positions Anthropic to lead the next phase of AI innovation and capture the enormous opportunity ahead," said Brad Gerstner, Founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital.

Anthropic has been in fierce competition with OpenAI for both fundraising and user growth ahead of their respective IPOs. Earlier this year, OpenAI raised a massive $122 billion round in March at an $852 billion post-money valuation. Elon Musk's SpaceX—which merged with xAI earlier this year—is targeting a $2 trillion valuation in its upcoming IPO and seeking to raise over $75 billion.