Anthropic said in a blog post last Thursday that it raised $65 billion in an H-series funding round led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. According to the company, that financing brings its post-money valuation to $965 billion. OpenAI — another leading company in generative artificial intelligence — most recently published a similar post putting its own valuation at $852 billion.
Taken at face value, these figures mean that Anthropic now technically ranks above OpenAI in private-market valuations.
Why the lead is not decisive
Several caveats temper the apparent ranking shift:
- Long-term profitability for AI-as-a-core-business remains unproven, a point repeatedly made by critics such as Ed Zitron and by institutional voices like HSBC.
- Anthropic says it recorded operating profit in one quarter, but the Wall Street Journal noted that “it is not clear which accounting methods Anthropic used to recognize revenue and expenses,” and warned the company might not stay profitable over a full year as it plans spending increases to meet large computational demands.
- Anthropic’s operations carry very high compute costs: the company has spent several hundred billion dollars with suppliers such as Amazon, Google and Broadcom, and in the short term was paying about $1.5 billion per month to SpaceX.
Those facts suggest it would be premature to label Anthropic a sustainably profitable business on the basis of the valuation announcement alone.
Product effects and market reactions
Anthropic says its revenues accelerated in early 2026 as enterprise customers adopted its products. The narrative around so-called “Vibe coding” and the Claude Code coding product — which implies companies may need fewer junior programmers for routine tasks — has influenced market expectations. Even small product changes for Claude Code have begun to move public markets, particularly influencing valuations of SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies.
OpenAI, by contrast, appears recently to be focusing on catching up rather than extending a clear lead.
Are these valuations directly comparable?
Not exactly:
- OpenAI’s $852 billion figure was calculated from financing activity that occurred about two months before the Anthropic announcement, so the two numbers are based on financing events at different times.
- Both companies remain privately held, so valuation signals are dispersed and somewhat uncertain because detailed revenues and expenses need not be publicly disclosed.
- On Forge Global, the secondary market for private shares, Anthropic’s valuation was estimated at roughly $1 trillion last month versus about $880 billion for OpenAI.
- The Polymarket betting market places an 89% probability on Anthropic having a higher valuation than OpenAI by the end of June.
What could clarify the picture?
Public listings would make comparisons far clearer:
- The New York Times reported on May 20 that OpenAI was expected to file for a public listing “in the coming weeks,” and that it may have confidentially filed as early as May 22.
- Forbes has suggested Anthropic’s IPO could come around October.
If both companies become publicly traded, their share prices will provide real-time, directly comparable market valuations and let investors vote with actual capital.
Conclusion
Anthropic’s $65 billion H-round and the company’s claim of a $965 billion post-money valuation have pushed it ahead of OpenAI in many private-market tallies. At the same time, large ongoing compute costs, questions around accounting and the private status of both companies mean that the current ranking is best seen as a snapshot that could change, perhaps significantly, once either or both firms list publicly.
