Anthropic overtakes OpenAI as world’s most valuable AI startup with record $900bn valuation

In one of the most significant moments in the short but seismic history of artificial intelligence, Anthropic has officially surpassed OpenAI as the world’s highest-valued AI startup. The San Francisco company announced on Thursday that it has raised $65 billion in new financing, valuing it at $900 billion before the inclusion of the new capital, putting it ahead of OpenAI’s last reported valuation of $852 billion.

The funding round was led by Green Oaks Capital, Sequoia Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Dragoneer Investment Group, and also brought in new strategic investors, including Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix, chip companies whose hardware is essential to building and running AI systems. Anthropic has now raised more than $130 billion in total since it was founded in 2021, according to PitchBook.

Its roster of investors already included Amazon, Google, Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The milestone is remarkable for its speed. Just 62 days ago, OpenAI, which launched the modern AI era with ChatGPT in 2022, announced a $122 billion fundraise that valued it at $730 billion, a number it took roughly a decade to reach. Anthropic, founded only four years ago by former OpenAI researchers including CEO Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela, has surpassed that in half the time.

The company’s revenue run rate, its expected annual revenue based on current performance, crossed $47 billion this month, driven largely by its Claude Code product, which hundreds of businesses have paid to use since Anthropic significantly improved its coding capability in November 2025.

Alongside the funding announcement, Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4.8, its new flagship model. The model outperforms all publicly available AI systems on “vibe coding”, the process of AI writing functional software from prompts written in plain English, scoring 10% higher than its predecessor on the benchmark from Vals AI. It also outperforms previous models in mathematics.

Why Anthropic surpassed OpenAI and what this means

The reasons for Anthropic’s ascent are specific. Its focus on AI safety, building that philosophy directly into its model training rather than treating it as a separate concern, has become a competitive advantage with enterprise customers in regulated industries like finance and healthcare, where predictable and auditable model behaviour is a procurement requirement.

That credibility also helped Anthropic navigate a recent public dispute with the Pentagon over the use of AI in warfare, and the company recently advised Pope Leo XIV on his papal encyclical warning about AI’s risks to humanity.

OpenAI, meanwhile, has faced questions about its leadership stability, the departure of several senior researchers, and the pressure of managing a company that has grown faster than almost any in history. It remains the dominant name in consumer AI through ChatGPT, but in the enterprise and developer markets where serious money is being made, Anthropic has been gaining ground.

For industry stakeholders, developers, enterprises, and investors, the leadership change signals that the AI race is not a one-horse contest. For everyday users, it means the company behind Claude is now the most heavily resourced AI lab in the world, with more capital to improve its products, expand its infrastructure, and push its research further.

The top 5 most valuable AI startups right now

Based on the most recent confirmed data as of May 2026, the rankings stand as follows. Anthropic leads at a $900 billion pre-money valuation following Thursday’s round. OpenAI follows at $852 billion after closing its record-breaking $122 billion funding round in March 2026.

xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company and creator of Grok, merged with SpaceX in February 2026 in a deal that valued xAI at $250 billion, though the combined entities’ targeting a June IPO complicates a direct comparison with pure AI startups.

Perplexity AI, the AI-powered search company, is valued at approximately $20 billion following a March 2026 funding round that included $830 million for European data centre expansion. Mistral AI, Europe’s leading frontier model company, rounds out the top five at approximately $14 billion.

Similar read: SpaceX overtakes OpenAI as world’s most valuable private company with record $1.25 trillion valuation

Both Anthropic and OpenAI are eyeing public offerings, with SpaceX already having filed its IPO prospectus. Whoever gets to market first, and at what valuation, will set a benchmark for what AI companies are worth in the public markets.