"Secures $30 Billion in Funding" Anthropic Accelerates AI Agent-Led Expansion, Escalating B2B and IPO Rivalry With OpenAI

Anthropic completes $30 billion funding round, surging valuation
Agent-driven technology fuels B2B demand absorption and robust revenue growth
OpenAI counters with coding-specialized model launch and IPO review

Anthropic, the developer of the generative artificial intelligence (AI) model Claude, has secured a massive new funding round. Leveraging its AI agent capabilities, the company has absorbed growing Business-to-Business (B2B) demand and delivered a marked revenue uptrend, drawing heightened investor attention. As Anthropic’s influence within the AI market steadily expands, rival OpenAI has moved to counter by launching B2B-focused models and accelerating preparations for an initial public offering (IPO).

Anthropic Secures $30 Billion

According to Reuters and other foreign media outlets on the 18th, Anthropic finalized a $30 billion Series G funding round on the 12th. The round was co-led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and technology-focused global investment firm Coatue Management, with participation from Big Tech companies including Nvidia and Microsoft. Major global financial institutions such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs also contributed capital. Data Center Dynamics estimates that, following the latest fundraising, Anthropic’s valuation has surged to approximately $380 billion.

The Guardian noted that Anthropic’s previous funding round in September last year valued the company at $183 billion, adding that subsequent technological advancements and the rapid expansion of paid products such as Claude Code among enterprise clients have intensified investor interest. Anthropic has already secured a formidable corporate customer base. Eight of the top ten U.S. companies ranked by Fortune are currently deploying Claude, and more than 500 clients spend in excess of $1 million annually on Anthropic’s services.

This momentum has translated into sustained financial expansion. During the latest funding round, Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao stated that Anthropic’s revenue has grown more than tenfold annually over the past three years and that its run-rate revenue this year has reached $14 billion. Explosive growth driven by B2B demand has emerged as a decisive investment catalyst.

Anthropic’s Competitive Edge in the B2B Market

Anthropic’s B2B competitiveness rests on its differentiated AI agent architecture. Claude Code, launched in May last year, moves beyond simple code generation by executing tests and correcting errors, an agent-based structure that has rapidly attracted enterprise clients. Claude Code alone generates approximately $2.5 billion in annual revenue. Claude Cowork, designed for general knowledge workers, is expanding its footprint across professional software domains including legal review, financial analysis, and document drafting. Claude Opus 4.6, unveiled on the 5th, demonstrated superior performance in fields requiring advanced tool utilization such as finance and law, ranking first globally on the GDPval-AA benchmark, an index measuring knowledge-work capabilities.

On the 17th, Anthropic unveiled a new AI language model, Claude Sonnet 4.6, less than two weeks after the launch of Opus 4.6. The company stated that high-value professional task performance previously attainable only with Opus-tier models is now available in Sonnet 4.6. It further emphasized that Sonnet 4.6 offers a beta 1 million-token context window, significantly expanding both the volume and complexity of information that can be processed in a single session. An Anthropic official described Sonnet 4.6 as a model representing the pinnacle of AI technology, highlighting its expansive context-processing capacity as a breakthrough that will unlock new possibilities across business and research domains.

Anthropic’s rapid succession of model releases reflects a strategy aimed at securing an upper hand in intensifying competition with OpenAI and other rivals. OpenAI, which has long dominated the generative AI market on the strength of its robust consumer user base, has increasingly shifted focus toward B2B demand. On the 5th, it launched GPT-5.3-Codex, a coding-specialized model positioned directly against Claude Code. OpenAI, currently pursuing a funding round of up to $100 billion, has reportedly presented internal data to investors indicating that Codex is eroding Claude Code’s market share.

IPO Race Within the AI Industry

The rivalry between the two companies is equally evident in their IPO trajectories. On the 29th of last month, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing multiple sources, that OpenAI has engaged in informal discussions with Wall Street banks regarding a potential IPO and is expanding its finance team in preparation. Recent hires include new Chief Accounting Officer Azeem Azhar and incoming Corporate Finance Head Cynthia Gaeler, who will oversee investor relations.

Sources indicated that OpenAI executives have privately expressed concern about Anthropic’s listing plans. Anthropic has retained Wilson Sonsini, a law firm with extensive experience in technology IPOs, and is reportedly advancing preparations for a public offering within the year, having recently recruited a number of senior financial specialists to lead the process. With no next-generation AI company such as OpenAI or Anthropic yet publicly listed, the first mover is poised to capture outsized investor attention, creating conditions for an accelerated IPO race.

An IPO could also alleviate mounting market concerns over large-scale AI infrastructure investments. OpenAI has outlined plans to invest $1.4 trillion in AI infrastructure over the next eight years, while Anthropic pledged in November last year to allocate $50 billion toward building AI infrastructure in the United States. Such capital commitments represent a significant burden for private companies reliant on external funding. A successful public listing would enable both firms to leverage IPO proceeds and enhanced capital-raising capacity as public entities to underpin these aggressive investment agendas.