Anthropic surpasses OpenAI with near-trillion dollar valuation

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Anthropic, the maker of one of the trendiest tools in finance right now, Claude, said Thursday it raised $65 billion in Series H funding at a reported $965 billion post-money valuation, surpassing rival OpenAI and intensifying the race among AI companies to secure compute capacity and enterprise customers.

The funding round, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, comes as Claude continues expanding into accounting, forecasting, tax, audit and operational finance workflows inside large enterprises.

In a LinkedIn post Thursday, Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao said the funding reflects "continued rapid growth in demand for Claude across enterprises and the people who use it for their everyday work." Rao added the company plans to use the capital to expand compute infrastructure, scale products and continue investing in AI safety and interpretability research.

OpenAI and Anthropic's AI arms race continues

The announcement follows recent public comments from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar about the growing infrastructure demands tied to AI adoption. During a podcast appearance earlier this month, Friar described OpenAI as facing a "vertical wall of demand" while discussing how aggressively companies are pursuing access to compute.

"There's not a lot of compute in 2026," Friar said while explaining how OpenAI is attempting to secure future infrastructure capacity years ahead of expected demand.

"My job as a good CFO is always to create optionality," Friar added while discussing fundraising strategy, compute procurement and long-term capital planning.

Friar also described enterprise demand accelerating rapidly across industries. "Our sales team has just run ragged at the moment," she said. "Everyone wants to talk to us about 'what can I do to transform my business?'"

The banking industry has emerged as one of the largest areas of enterprise AI focus.

"I have not talked to a single CEO of a bank that does not have this as their top priority currently," Friar added while discussing AI deployment conversations with financial institutions.

Rao has outlined Anthropic's strategy in similarly expansive terms, but placed heavier emphasis on enterprise workflow integration and compute allocation efficiency. "The compute that we procure is the lifeblood of our business," Rao said during a recent podcast appearance of his own discussing how Anthropic allocates infrastructure across research, internal operations and customer demand.