Anthropic Tops OpenAI to Become the World’s Most Valuable A.I. Start-Up

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Anthropic raised $65 billion in new fund-raising that put its value at $900 billion, ahead of OpenAI’s last valuation of $730 billion, as the companies duel for A.I. dominance.

Anthropic, once the lesser-known artificial intelligence competitor to OpenAI, has been on an inexorable rise over the past few months.

The San Francisco company recently dueled with the Pentagon over the use of A.I. in warfare. It released a powerful A.I. model, Mythos, that it said was uncannily capable of finding and exploiting hidden flaws in software. And the company advised Pope Leo XIV on his papal encyclical delivered on Monday, in which he warned about safeguarding humanity from A.I.’s most disruptive effects.

On Thursday, Anthropic punctuated its ascent by officially passing OpenAI as the world’s highest-flying A.I. start-up. Anthropic said it had raised $65 billion in financing that values it at $900 billion before the inclusion of the new capital, a deal that puts it ahead of OpenAI’s last valuation of $730 billion.

The company also unveiled a new flagship A.I. model, Claude Opus 4.8, which is significantly better than its predecessor at generating computer code.

The new investment, which was led by investors including Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital, Altimeter Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group, boosted Anthropic’s value to nearly two and a half times its previous valuation of $380 billion about three months ago. » | Mike Isaac and Cade Metz | Reporting from San Francisco | Thursday, May 28, 2026