OpenAI raises largest private technology funding round in history. Rival Anthropic currently holds second place.
Anthropic announced Thursday that it has completed a $30 billion funding round at a post-money valuation of $380 billion. This is more than double what the artificial intelligence company was valued at when it last raised capital in September.
The companies behind Claude are looking to align with OpenAI, which closed a more than $40 billion round led by SoftBank last year. The largest private deal before that was Ant Group’s $14 billion capital raise in 2018.
Developing and training AI models is very expensive. This is a big reason why Anthropic and OpenAI continue to raise so much money, as they need to funnel money into computing resources such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units. They also have fierce competition googleannounced plans to spend up to $185 billion in capital expenditures this year and is investing heavily in Gemini products.
Anthropic’s latest funding round was led by Coatue and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, according to a release. DE Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, Founders Fund, ICONIQ and MGX also participated.
Anthropic said the round includes “a portion” of previously announced investments. microsoft and Nvidiaannounced plans in November to invest up to $5 billion and $10 billion, respectively.
Founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI researchers and executives, Anthropic has had early success selling to enterprises, but OpenAI has been primarily a consumer company thanks to the popularity of ChatGPT. Anthropic’s annual sales rose to $14 billion, after reaching about $10 billion last year, the company said.
“Whether they’re an entrepreneur, a start-up or the world’s largest corporation, the message from our customers is the same: Claude is becoming increasingly important to the fabric of business,” Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said in a statement. “This funding reflects the incredible demand from these customers.”
The company said the new capital will support Anthropic’s continued investment in infrastructure expansion, research and enterprise-grade products.
As previously reported by CNBC, OpenAI is also in funding talks with investors for a round that could close at around $100 billion. The company needs to increase its cash position after closing $1.4 trillion worth of infrastructure deals last year.
Anthropic gets about 80% of its business from companies, CEO Dario Amodei told CNBC last month. This is also thanks to the company’s viral AI coding tool Claude Code, which can automate parts of the software development process.
Claude Code’s annual revenue has increased to $2.5 billion, and enterprise subscriptions have quadrupled since the beginning of the year, Anthropic announced Thursday. Enterprise users account for more than half of Claude Code’s revenue.
The popularity of this coding tool and the advancement of Anthropic’s productivity product, Claude Cowork, have contributed to the sharp decline in software stocks in recent months. The sector has lost about $2 trillion in market capitalization since its peak as investors grow concerned about the potential for AI to disrupt these businesses.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is actively promoting Codex, a competing AI coding tool, in an effort to keep up. Last week, OpenAI released a new Codex model, GPT‑5.3-Codex, and a standalone app for users with Apple computers.
Anthropic announced its latest model, the Claude Opus 4.6, earlier this month. The company says this model is better at coding and creating higher quality professional work products and deliverables.
“Demand from businesses and developers reflects the trust they place in Claude for the work that matters most,” Anthropic said Thursday. “As AI moves toward implementation at scale, we will continue to build models, products, and partnerships to lead the transition.”
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