Anthropic becomes most valuable AI firm after $65bn funding round

US tech company Anthropic has shot to the top of the Artificial Intelligence startup scene, becoming the most valuable player in Silicon Valley after raised an additional $65 billion in funding.

The funding round pushes the company's valuation to a staggering $965 billion, above competitors including its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Anthropic's value has nearly tripled since it was pegged at $380 billion in February. Competitor OpenAI, which triggered the current AI boom in 2022 with ChatGPT, was recently valued at $730 billion after its own funding round.

A big part of this growth comes from the surging demand for Anthropic's Claude AI products, especially the coding assistant known as Claude Code.

Anthropic said that it's now making annualized revenue of $47 billion, a notable rise from $30 billion earlier this year and around $10 billion in annual revenue last year.

In other news, Anthropic also introduced its latest AI model, Claude Opus 4.8, along with Claude Mythos Preview, a cybersecurity tool that's currently being offered to a select group of enterprise clients.