San Francisco, May 17, 2026, 03:31 (PDT)
Anthropic is back in the funding spotlight after the Financial Times said the Claude developer lined up a $30 billion round valuing the company near $900 billion. That number, if the deal goes through, would be almost three times Anthropic’s last confirmed valuation and put it among the biggest private tech financings ever.
The timing is key since there’s no public market for trading right now. U.S. exchanges don’t open on Sunday, and the NYSE trades its main session weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. That means investors can only size up Anthropic on private deals and IPO talk, not a share price. An initial public offering, or IPO, is when a company first sells its shares to public investors.
The reported price brings Anthropic closer to OpenAI, its main rival. OpenAI said on March 31 it raised $122 billion in committed capital and now has a post-money valuation of $852 billion, which is its value after adding new cash.
Anthropic kicked off last week’s run with a Bloomberg story saying it’s in early talks for at least $30 billion in new funds at a pre-money valuation over $900 billion, not counting the potential new money. Bloomberg said the deal isn’t done, and there’s no term sheet yet.
Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer and Altimeter Capital are leading the funding round for Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reported. The paper said the round could top the $30 billion target as the company raises cash before a possible IPO. Anthropic is forecasting a $50 billion revenue run-rate by mid-2026, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, according to the Journal. Run-rate revenue uses current sales to estimate a full year’s total, but it’s not the same as audited annual revenue.
The fundraising effort isn’t only for bumping up Anthropic’s valuation. Reuters said earlier this month Anthropic was considering raising tens of billions of dollars this summer to boost spending on computing power, which is expensive but needed for developing and running new AI models.
Anthropic last reported numbers in February, announcing $30 billion in Series G funding led by GIC and Coatue. That round gave the company a $380 billion post-money valuation. CFO Krishna Rao said at the time customers were saying “Claude is increasingly becoming critical” to business operations, and pointed to customer demand driving the new funding. Anthropic
Anthropic last week tried to show its tech can go beyond chatbots. The company and the Gates Foundation said they plan to put $200 million over four years into AI for health and education. Anthropic will give technical help and Claude credits, while the foundation handles grants and program design. “Core to who we are as a company,” said Elizabeth Kelly, who leads Anthropic’s beneficial deployments team. Reuters
Anthropic is getting stricter on stock sales before any IPO. The company’s help center, updated this week, said any stock sale that isn’t okayed by its board is void. Anthropic also said it does not allow SPVs—special purpose vehicles built to hold investments—to buy its shares, and warned that offers of indirect access may be invalid or scams.
But it isn’t a straight line. AI valuations are tied to steady revenue gains, chip and power supply, and whether public investors stay interested in companies burning through big sums of cash. Reuters Breakingviews said in March that Big Tech was set to spend about $650 billion this year, mostly on AI data centers, pointing to Morgan Stanley’s call for $2.9 trillion in global data-center investment between 2025 and 2028.
Investors are watching to see if this week brings a signed deal after earlier reports of talks and agreed terms, and if the round holds at $30 billion or goes higher. Market focus is also on whether Anthropic will name any backers, say more about IPO timing, or keep details under wraps.
Anthropic has gone from a fast-growing AI lab to a private-market benchmark, last week’s read shows. The question now is whether investors will agree to terms that let public buyers in with enough upside when the IPO drops.
