Anthropic surpasses OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup following completion of a USD65 billion H-round financing, valuing the developer of large language model Claude at USD965 billion. US law firms Orrick and Gunderson Dettmer advised on the transaction.
Krishna Rao, chief financial officer of Anthropic, said in the financing announcement on 28 May 2026: “This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens.”
Four days after announcing the financing, Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 1 June. According to the company’s statement, once the SEC completes its review, Anthropic will have the option to pursue an initial public offering, with any listing plans depending on market conditions and other factors.
Orrick counselled Anthropic, with partners Laura Barr and Stephen Venuto leading the team. International trade and investment partner Harry Clark, antitrust partner Amy Ray and of counsel Kristin Petersen were also particpated in the transaction.
Gunderson Dettmer advised the backers, including lead investors Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, along with several others. The team included corporate partners Greg Volkmar, Hilary Adams, Steve Baglio, Mark Oblad, Ryan Purcell and Jeff Stricker; strategic transactions and licensing partners Aaron Rubin and Katie Gardner; data privacy partner Anna Westfelt and of counsel Cecilia Jeong; and regulatory partner Gregory Kinzelman.
Anthropic said in the announcement that the proceeds would be used to advance safety and interpretability research, expand computing capacity to meet growing demand for Claude, and scale the products and partnerships on which the company’s customers rely.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI team members, Anthropic focuses on AI safety and frontier technology research. In late November 2025, the company launched Claude Opus 4.5, a model known for its coding capabilities, driving a significant increase in the adoption of the Claude Code developer tool.
