According to people familiar with the matter, artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, the developer of the chatbot Claude, is conducting a new round of financing, with the company's pre-money valuation expected to reach a staggering $3.5 trillion. One of the anonymous sources indicated that the AI developer is negotiating to raise $100 billion. It is understood that Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and hedge fund Coatue Management plan to co-lead this funding round. One person noted that the total amount raised could still change. According to prior reports, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.US) and NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA.US), which had previously announced a joint investment of up to $150 billion in Anthropic, are also expected to participate in this round. Both Anthropic and GIC declined to comment. A representative for Coatue did not respond to a request for comment. Completing a funding round at this valuation level would signify a massive, leapfrogging increase in Anthropic's worth. Just last September, the company completed a $130 billion funding round at a valuation of $1.83 trillion, a scale that already cemented its status as one of the world's most valuable startups and highlighted investors' broad and enduring interest in the AI boom. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has consistently positioned itself as a trustworthy, safety-focused, and reliable enterprise. Similar to OpenAI, Anthropic is continuously increasing its investments in chips and data centers to develop more advanced artificial intelligence systems and promote broader application of the technology. Its competitor OpenAI achieved a valuation of $5 trillion during a secondary stock sale last year. Reportedly, this ChatGPT maker has been in discussions with investors to raise hundreds of billions of dollars at a valuation potentially as high as $7.5 trillion. Anthropic was founded by ex-OpenAI staff in 2021, is headquartered in San Francisco, and currently boasts over 300,000 enterprise customers. These clients use its models to streamline workplace tasks—particularly in computer programming, where the company has become a market leader. However, Anthropic faces intense competition from both OpenAI and Google. In November last year, Anthropic launched a new version of its powerful AI model, designed to better automate coding and office tasks, as part of its effort to compete with OpenAI and Google for business clients. Anthropic stated that the new model, Claude Opus 4.5, is more capable than its predecessor at software engineering tasks, such as fixing bugs, and can perform them without user assistance. The model is also engineered to better execute complex, multi-step tasks across a user's computer and the internet.
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