Anthropic has closed the gap, and then some, on OpenAI.
Driving the news: Anthropic has reportedly received several offers from investors for a new funding round that could give it a valuation of over US$800 billion, sources told Bloomberg. The AI giant has brushed them aside (possibly because shareholders don’t want to give up shares ahead of a potential IPO in October), but hasn’t ruled out accepting more cash.
Its last raise was a mere two months ago, securing $30 billion at a US$380 billion valuation, but the company is on a 2016 Stephen Curry-level heater right now, and more investors want a piece of the action.
Why it matters: Between the market shift to enterprise customers, the success of Claude Code, and buzz around Mythos (an AI agent the company says is so powerful it must be kept under lock and key), it would appear that Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI as the top dog in gen AI.
Last week, Anthropic reported that its expected revenue surged to $30 billion from $19 billion. For comparison, OpenAI said that its revenue was $24 billion annualized.
And while OpenAI still has a higher valuation at $852 billion, a new Financial Times report detailed how its backers are increasingly questioning this lofty estimation.
Yes, but: It’s not all roses for Anthropic. In recent weeks, the company has taken heat from power users over a perceived drop in performance of Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Code. Some even believe Anthropic is purposely degrading Claude as it struggles with a lack of compute. Anthropic has denied this, but the incident is still indicative of growing pains.—QH
