Anthropic’s New Funding Round Pushes Its Valuation Past OpenAI
Bloomberg reports that Anthropic has raised new funding at a valuation that, on at least one measure, puts it ahead of OpenAI for the first time. Bloomberg AI reporter Shirin Ghaffary argues the investor demand is less about a settled ranking than about Anthropic’s rapid revenue growth and its clearer enterprise use case through Claude Code. She cautions that the lead is provisional, with OpenAI and Google also advancing in coding agents as the companies move toward possible IPOs.
Investors are rewarding revenue growth, even as the valuation comparison is muddied
Anthropic’s financing story rests on a sharp revenue ramp and a disputed-looking valuation comparison with OpenAI. Bloomberg’s written description says Anthropic raised $65 billion in a funding round that valued the company at $965 billion including the new investment, eclipsing OpenAI’s value for the first time. Shirin Ghaffary used a different scale in the discussion: Anthropic at $90 billion pre-money, compared with OpenAI’s last reported valuation earlier in the spring at north of $80 billion pre-money.
Those figures should not be collapsed into one clean comparison. Bloomberg’s description gives one valuation scale, while Ghaffary’s spoken comparison uses pre-money figures around $90 billion and north of $80 billion. The business point is clearer than the exact headline number: investors are valuing Anthropic as a company that has quickly turned frontier AI into revenue.
| Reference | Figure | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic funding round | $65B | Bloomberg’s written description |
| Anthropic valuation including new investment | $965B | Bloomberg’s written description |
| Anthropic pre-money valuation | $90B | Ghaffary’s valuation comparison |
| OpenAI pre-money valuation | North of $80B | Ghaffary said OpenAI was last valued there earlier in the spring |
Ghaffary said Anthropic is nearing $850 million in run-rate revenue, which she described as projected annual revenue at the current pace. That growth rate is central to investor interest. Three years earlier, she said, Anthropic was “not even really a product” selling software.
Tim Stenovec asked whether this could be Anthropic’s final fundraising round before an IPO. Ghaffary said it “very well could be,” adding that both OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing IPOs as soon as the fall, according to Bloomberg’s reporting. That timing would make the valuation contest more than a private-market benchmark: if the listings happen, public investors would be asked to price companies whose relative positions are still changing quickly.
Claude Code gives Anthropic a clearer enterprise use case
Stenovec framed the product problem directly: if OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other model makers can look interchangeable to some customers, what is Anthropic doing to stand apart?
Ghaffary’s answer was Claude Code, Anthropic’s coding agent. She did not argue that Anthropic has escaped competition in AI models. She pointed instead to a clearer business use case: automated software work.
Claude Code, she said, had early adopters in the software industry before its use expanded to Fortune 500 companies and other major business customers. That adoption pattern is the business reason Anthropic appears especially attractive to investors in the moment Bloomberg described. The company focused earlier and more narrowly on business uses for AI, and Ghaffary called that focus one of its strengths in the market.
The point was not that Claude Code makes Anthropic’s advantage permanent. It was that the product gave Anthropic a route into enterprise customers at a time when investors are looking for evidence that AI companies can turn model capability into revenue. In Ghaffary’s framing, Anthropic’s strength is tied to practical uptake among software teams and large companies, not simply to a broad claim of technical superiority.
Anthropic’s lead depends on a moving coding-agent race
Anthropic’s advantage is provisional because the product category helping it stand out is also attracting the strongest rivals in AI. Ghaffary said Google has improved its own coding agents, and OpenAI’s Codex tools are also “picking up steam.” The same enterprise coding market that has helped Anthropic show traction is becoming a direct competitive front.
It’s still early in the AI game and these companies are constantly surpassing each other with each model release.
That caveat matters for both the funding round and the possible IPO timing. Anthropic has a fast revenue ramp, a clearer enterprise wedge through Claude Code, and a valuation comparison Bloomberg described as moving it ahead of OpenAI. But Ghaffary’s own framing leaves the hierarchy unsettled. If Anthropic and OpenAI move toward public listings as soon as the fall, they would be asking investors to value momentum in a market where model releases and coding-agent adoption can quickly change the ranking.