Anthropic, the company behind the Claude family of AI models, has raised $65bn in fresh funding, pushing its post-money valuation to $965bn and establishing it, at least by that measure, as the most valuable artificial intelligence startup in the world. The round, which was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, is widely seen as a marker of how dramatically the competitive landscape has shifted since Anthropic was regarded as a secondary player in a race dominated by OpenAI. Much of that shift is attributed to the rapid uptake of Claude's enterprise and coding tools, particularly following the release of powerful coding assistants late last year, which appear to have resonated more deeply with large businesses than some of the more consumer-oriented products offered by rivals. Krishna Rao, Anthropic's chief financial officer, described the momentum in a blogpost, writing that "Claude is increasingly indispensable to our growing global community of customers, and we work tirelessly to make tools like Claude Code and Cowork more helpful, more powerful, and more adaptable to their needs."

The valuation is also expected to influence a crowded calendar of forthcoming initial public offerings that includes both OpenAI and SpaceX, since the figure sets a new reference point against which competing companies are likely to be assessed. Analysts have suggested that investor appetite for AI listings may be recalibrated accordingly. Anthropicʼs position is, however, not without complications.…