Inside Anthropic's Historic Rise to a $965 Billion Valuation, Surpassing OpenAI

The round was not just large—it was historically large. Multiple lead investors each contributed more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter . The raise more than doubled Anthropic's prior valuation from February 2026, when a $30 billion Series G round valued it at $380 billion .

The stated purpose of the capital was to fuel frontier research, product development, and the infrastructure expansions needed to meet growing demand for Claude, particularly among enterprise customers .

Early Signals in Secondary Markets

The formal funding round of late May confirmed what secondary markets had been telegraphing for weeks. In late April 2026, Business Insider reported that Anthropic's implied valuation on Forge Global, a leading private-company share trading platform, had surged to approximately $1 trillion .

Forge Global CEO Kelly Rodriques confirmed the pricing directly, noting that desperate buyers were racing to secure a diminishing supply of private shares . One existing shareholder even offered to sell at a $1.15 trillion valuation, according to secondary-market data .

The secondary-market frenzy represented a 2.6x premium over the February Series G primary valuation and placed Anthropic comfortably ahead of OpenAI, which traded at approximately $880 billion on the same venues . While secondary prices reflect thin, illiquid trading and not formal primary rounds, they provided a powerful signal of where institutional conviction was headed.

The Revenue Engine: Claude Code

Investor enthusiasm was not based on narrative alone. A sharp revenue surge, driven by enterprise adoption of Claude's coding tools, transformed the company's financial profile in a single quarter.

Reporting indicated annualized revenue climbed from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion by March 2026—a 233% increase in roughly three months . The growth was directly linked to Claude Code, Anthropic's developer-focused product, whose rapid uptake fueled the secondary-market bid-ups and informed the eventual Series H terms.

Earlier in May, reports had already surfaced that Anthropic was in early-stage talks to raise between $30 billion and $50 billion at a valuation up to $950 billion . The eventual $65 billion close at $965 billion showed that demand outstripped even those elevated expectations.

Seven Founders Join the Billionaires Index Simultaneously

The funding round created a wealth event with no precedent in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Following the close on May 29, 2026, all seven Anthropic co-founders entered the ranking of the world's 500 richest people on the same day .

Bloomberg described the simultaneous addition as the largest single-instance entry from one company in the history of the index . Each co-founder was estimated to be worth approximately $8 billion, despite each owning less than 1% of the company .

The seven co-founders are:

• Dario Amodei, CEO
• Daniela Amodei, President
• Jack Clark
• Jared Kaplan
• Tom Brown
• Christopher Olah
• Sam McCandlish

The group had already been billionaires at earlier valuation milestones—Forbes had estimated their net worths at $3.7 billion each in January 2026 and $7 billion after the February Series G . The May 2026 round merely catapulted them into the same global wealth tier normally occupied by the founders of much older public technology giants.

How the AI Hierarchy Flipped

Anthropic's rise to the top of the AI startup leaderboard was not gradual; it was sudden. In February 2026, Anthropic was valued at $380 billion—itself double the $183 billion valuation from late 2025 .

But the market reassessment between April and late May was ferocious. Reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg in mid-May 2026 noted that an anticipated $30–$50 billion round at a $950 billion valuation would make Anthropic more valuable than OpenAI for the first time . By the time the round closed at $65 billion and $965 billion, the hierarchy had definitively flipped .

OpenAI had raised $122 billion in March 2026 at an $852 billion post-money valuation, but its pace had been overtaken . The speed of the reversal—just 10 weeks—has no obvious parallel in recent technology history.

Some reporting noted the possibility of both companies moving toward public markets as early as October 2026, though no formal IPO plans have been confirmed .

What Comes Next

Anthropic's near-trillion-dollar private valuation introduces a set of questions that would have seemed implausible 18 months ago. Can a company whose primary revenue driver—Claude Code—was barely known outside developer circles a year ago justify a valuation larger than most public tech companies?

The secondary-market surge and the primary round both answer that question in the affirmative for now, but both forms of valuation carry their own asterisks. Secondary market pricing reflects thin, FOMO-driven demand from investors locked out of primary rounds . Primary valuation reflects negotiated terms with institutional investors who have their own near-term incentives.

What is incontestable is that as of late May 2026, the AI industry has a new leader by market value. Anthropic has vaulted past OpenAI, its seven co-founders are billionaires, and the Claude platform's enterprise growth has convinced global capital that the race for AI supremacy is far from decided.