The company is enjoying an offering of around $50 billion at a valuation of $850–$900 billion, with a board decision expected in May and an IPO possible as early as October 2026.
Anthropic has begun raising a new funding round worth more than $900 billion, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. Consideration is still in the early stages and no offers have been received, the people said. The company declined to comment.
The board’s decision on whether to proceed is expected in May. If the round closes on those terms, Anthropic will surpass OpenAI, valued at $852 billion in its $122 billion record round completed in March, as the world’s most valuable private AI company.
The round will also more than double Anthropic’s current valuation. The company raised $30 billion in February 2026 at a value of $380 billion, a deal that has been described as the second largest private equity financing round in history.
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The speed of the valuation increase is amazing even by AI’s current levels: from $61.5 billion in March 2025, to $183 billion for its Series F in September, to $380 billion in February, to, if current negotiations continue, to more than $900 billion in May.
What causes the need?
Two things have combined to create the current urgency for investors. The first is Anthropic’s revenue trajectory. The company’s estimated annual revenue reached about $9 billion by the end of 2025, $30 billion by the end of March 2026, and the company said earlier this month that it exceeded $30 billion in annual revenue.
No company in the history of American technology has grown at that rate. Enterprise customers now represent nearly 80% of Anthropic’s revenue, with more than 1,000 businesses spending more than $1 million annually on its services.
The second is Mythos, Anthropic’s advanced cybersecurity model launched on April 7. Mythos has set up high-level meetings between Trump administration officials, technology executives, and bank executives, and, more importantly for fundraising, the company needs more computing power to run it at the desired scale.
Today, the White House simultaneously told Anthropic that it opposes expanding Mythos’ access to more users, in part because Anthropic doesn’t have enough computing power to serve more users without degrading the government’s own access.
Anthropic recently received major computing commitments from both Amazon, which agreed to invest up to $25 billion and provide 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, and Google, which committed up to $40 billion and another five gigawatts.
But running the Mythos complexity model at scale requires more than existing commitments can deliver, and the first round of financing gives Anthropic’s balance sheet flexibility to directly purchase additional computing beyond what its strategic partners have allocated.
IPO as the horizon
The timing of the negotiations was made up of Anthropic’s reported IPO plans. Bloomberg reports that the public listing could come in October 2026. TechCrunch’s sources describe the potential $50 billion round as likely to be the company’s last private fundraising before going public.
Anthropic is reportedly in early talks with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley about an offering, with estimates raising as much as $60 billion.
The pre-IPO valuation of $900 billion will set the stage for one of the largest public offerings in tech history, and will also increase pressure on OpenAI, which is expected to IPO in 2026 at a price that has been discussed by its investors in recent weeks.
Anthropic shares are already trading at around $1 trillion in secondary markets earlier this month, driven by a combination of accelerating revenue and an imbalance in demand for the available shares.
A primary round of up to $900 billion would represent a modest discount to that secondary price, which is unusual in the private markets, where primary rounds typically command a premium.
Whether Anthropic can sustain a revenue stream that allows for any value is a question both the May board’s decision and, ultimately, the public markets will have to answer.
