Anthropic Poised for $20B Funding Round

The AI investment frenzy carries on. Let’s all try to keep up.

Anthropic is on the verge of raising about $20 billion from venture capital firms and other investors, double the amount it initially sought, in a striking demonstration of the intense enthusiasm surrounding leading AI start-ups.

According to the Financial Times, people familiar with the matter said the fundraising, which is close to being finalised, would value the company at roughly $350 billion. If completed, it would rank among the largest private capital raises in technology history and cement Anthropic’s position as the most significant challenger to OpenAI.

The sharp increase in the size of the round highlights how quickly investor sentiment has shifted in favour of a small group of AI companies seen as potential long-term winners in the race to develop advanced models and commercial applications.

Investor demand forces upsized round

Anthropic had originally been in discussions to raise around $10 billion to fund its expansion, including the development of new models and the scaling of its computing infrastructure. That target has since doubled after investors expressed far greater interest than anticipated.

One investor involved in the round said demand totalled five to six times the original fundraising goal. According to people briefed on the talks, Anthropic plans to secure between $10 billion and $15 billion as an initial close, before completing the remainder of the raise over the following weeks.

The scale of demand reflects a belief among investors that Anthropic is well positioned to monetise AI, particularly through enterprise-focused products, at a time when companies across industries are rushing to integrate generative AI into their operations.

Backers are also drawn to what they see as a relatively stable leadership team and the strong uptake of the company’s coding assistant, Claude Code, which has become popular with software developers and businesses seeking productivity gains.

Blue-chip investors line up

The funding round is being led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and US-based investment firm Coatue. Sequoia Capital is also making a substantial investment as part of the deal.

Existing investors are expected to increase their stakes as well. These include Iconiq Capital, Altimeter Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, G Squared, and Factorial Funds.

In addition to financial investors, major technology companies are also committing capital. As part of the broader fundraising discussions, Microsoft and Nvidia have agreed to invest a combined total of up to $15 billion in Anthropic.

The participation of Nvidia, the dominant supplier of chips used to train and run AI models, underscores the increasingly tight links between AI developers and the hardware ecosystem that underpins the industry’s rapid growth.

IPO preparations gather pace

The fundraising talks are taking place alongside early preparations for a potential initial public offering that could come as soon as this year. While no final decision has been made, Anthropic has taken concrete steps towards a possible listing.

The company has hired law firm Wilson Sonsini to begin preparatory work and has held preliminary conversations with banks about a public flotation, according to people briefed on the process.

An IPO would mark a significant milestone for the AI sector, potentially opening public markets to one of the industry’s most closely watched companies and providing a benchmark for valuing other private AI groups.

Rivalry with OpenAI and roots of Anthropic

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has emerged as one of the leading developers of large language models, competing directly with OpenAI and Google to build the most advanced and capable AI systems. Its valuation has soared over the past year, making it one of the world’s most valuable private companies.

Chief executive Dario Amodei was previously a senior figure at OpenAI, where he was an early employee. He left in 2020 to co-found Anthropic after disagreements with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman over the company’s direction and the strength of safeguards around powerful AI systems.

Those concerns remain central to Anthropic’s public positioning. The company has emphasised what it calls “constitutional AI”, a framework designed to make models safer and more aligned with human values, as a differentiating feature.

Warnings on AI risks add contrast

The contrast between Anthropic’s surging valuation and its leadership’s warnings about AI risks was underscored this week when Amodei published a 20,000-word essay outlining his concerns about the pace of technological change.

In the essay, he argued that humanity “needs to wake up” to the potentially catastrophic dangers posed by increasingly powerful AI systems. He warned that existing safeguards may be insufficient to manage the consequences of handing such tools to governments, corporations, and individuals.

“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it,” he wrote, calling for greater urgency in addressing safety and governance.

The comments highlight a broader tension at the heart of the AI boom: while investors are pouring unprecedented sums into companies building ever more capable systems, some of the same executives leading those firms are publicly cautioning that the technology could outpace society’s ability to control it.

Anthropic declined to comment on the fundraising or its IPO preparations.

OpenAI has launched Prism, an AI workspace powered by GPT-5.2 that integrates directly into scientific research workflows.

The post Anthropic Poised for $20B Funding Round appeared first on eWEEK.