Now among the world’s most valuable private technology firms, the company confirmed the round on Thursday, saying investors including D. E. Shaw Ventures, ICONIQ and MGX co-led the deal. 

Microsoft and Nvidia also took part, adding to their existing investments. Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and Coatue Management were among the lead backers in what the company described as its Series G round. 

Other investors included Founders Fund, Qatar Investment Authority, Accel, General Catalyst and Jane Street.

With this latest raise, Anthropic’s total funding since it was founded now exceeds $57 billion. The Series G deal ranks among the largest private technology financings on record, second only to OpenAI’s $40 billion raise in 2025.

Anthropic said its annualised revenue has reached $14 billion. Its coding-focused product, Claude Code, accounts for more than $2.5 billion of that figure. The company said revenue from Claude Code has more than doubled since the start of 2026.

Business demand is growing. Subscriptions to Claude Code from companies have quadrupled this year. Enterprise clients now generate more than half of the product’s revenue, according to the company.

Anthropic has built much of its strategy around tools for developers and office workers. Its Claude Cowork agent carries out computer-based tasks for white-collar staff. 

The release of plugins for the agent unsettled parts of the software market, as investors weighed the possible impact of automation on traditional software providers.

The funding places Anthropic closer to its main competitor, OpenAI. In January OpenAI was in talks with SoftBank Group to raise as much as $30 billion more, in a deal that could value the company at about $830 billion.

Microsoft and Nvidia have now backed both companies, strengthening their positions as key suppliers of computing power to the artificial intelligence sector. Anthropic also counts Google and Amazon among its earlier supporters.

On regulation, Anthropic has taken a different line from many technology firms. The company has pledged $20 million to support U.S. political candidates who favour stronger oversight of artificial intelligence.

Earlier on Thursday, the company said: “The companies building AI have a responsibility to help ensure the technology serves the public good, not just their own interests.”

Chief executive Dario Amodei repeated that position at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, where he said artificial intelligence companies must ensure their technology benefits society as a whole.

Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, is also increasing its stake in Anthropic to about $1 billion, Reuters reported earlier this week.

The transaction makes OpenAI the most valuable private company in the world, surpassing Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is valued at $456 billion.

The deal was structured as a secondary sale, allowing staff and former insiders to cash out without the company going public. OpenAI had authorised up to $10.3 billion in stock sales, but only two-thirds were sold. Internally, this limitation is seen as a sign that many employees trust the company’s long-term prospects.

The investor mix also reveals the scale of interest in OpenAI’s growth. Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, and T. Rowe Price all bought into the round. SoftBank had already backed OpenAI in its $40 billion primary funding earlier this year, making this a reinforcement of its position.

Financially, the company is growing at a speed that few in Silicon Valley have matched. In the first half of 2025, OpenAI generated about $4.3 billion in revenue, already 16% higher than its full-year revenue for 2024. 

That growth has pushed the company into a league where it stands at the forefront of artificial intelligence and also sits at the centre of the global technology economy.

Alongside the capital raise, OpenAI is also exploring structural changes. Reports reveal the company is in talks with Microsoft to transition into a public benefit corporation. If completed, OpenAI’s nonprofit board would retain governance power, while its commercial arm would continue expanding at scale.

The timing of the share sale shows high competition for talent across the sector. Meta has gone as far as offering nine-figure compensation packages and recently hired Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old co-founder of Scale AI, to head its new superintelligence unit.

For OpenAI, the secondary sale does more than unlock employee liquidity. It functions as a retention strategy, a way to keep top engineers and researchers from defecting to rivals. Other high-value private companies such as Stripe, Databricks, and SpaceX have adopted similar tactics.

With this new valuation, Analysts say OpenAI has shown it can translate massive infrastructure and talent into recurring revenue streams. Billions already flow in and product adoption is growing continuously, hence, OpenAI now looks less like a risky investment and more like an indispensable pillar of the modern technology economy.

The deal, still in early discussions, would give current and former employees an opportunity to cash out shares worth several billion dollars ahead of any initial public offering.

If finalised, the proposed valuation for OpenAI would be a sharp jump from the company’s existing $300 billion figure, stressing its rapid revenue growth and also the escalating race among global tech giants to attract and retain AI talent.

The surge has been driven largely by ChatGPT, OpenAI’s flagship product, which now has around 700 million weekly active users, up from 400 million in February and four times higher than last year. The company’s paying enterprise clients have grown to 5 million, compared to 3 million just two months ago.

Financially, OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue has climbed to $13 billion, from $10 billion in June, with expectations to hit $20 billion by year-end. The company doubled its revenue in the first seven months of the year and is expanding its product reach even as it navigates corporate changes.

The share sale discussions follow OpenAI’s recent $8.3 billion funding injection from investors including Dragoneer, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Fidelity. 

This forms part of a $40 billion fundraising round led by Japan’s SoftBank Group, which has until the end of the year to complete its $22.5 billion commitment. The remainder has already been taken up at a $300 billion valuation, the source said.

The development is similar to private share sales by other high-growth technology firms such as ByteDance, Databricks, and Ramp, which have used such transactions to update market valuations and reward long-standing employees. 

Existing OpenAI investors, including Thrive Capital, are said to be in talks to participate in the sale. Thrive declined to comment.

Competition for AI talent is at an all-time high. Meta, for example, is investing billions in Scale AI in a bid to lure its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence division. Across the industry, lucrative compensation offers are becoming the norm for top engineers and researchers.

OpenAI, meanwhile, is preparing for some structural changes. Plans are underway to move away from its capped-profit model, potentially clearing the way for a public listing. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said in May that an IPO would happen only when both “the company and markets were ready.”

The company has also taken steps to reconnect with the open-source community, releasing open-weight models for the first time since 2019, a strategic move to counter competitors such as Anthropic.

A $500 billion valuation would place OpenAI among the most valuable privately held technology companies in history, rivalled only by firms like ByteDance and SpaceX. 

For the AI sector, it would be another sign that the biggest players are not limited to building powerful systems but are also securing the financial firepower to dominate the global market for years to come.

This revenue stream, revealed at the WWDC 2025, comes from three main areas, including consumer subscriptions, business clients using ChatGPT Enterprise, and developers tapping into its API. 

Again, the number does not include any licensing money from Microsoft or the company’s larger one-off enterprise deals, according to a company spokesperson.

In less than 36 months, OpenAI has grown from a disruptive newcomer to a tech king. Last year, it reported $5.5 billion in recurring revenue, but today, that number has doubled. 

Nonetheless, the company burned through approximately $5 billion in 2024 alone, so its growth wasn’t cheap. It paid for scale; recruiting top talent, buying computing power, and continuously improving the products that drive the company’s appeal.

While OpenAI hasn’t published its operating costs in full, we know the firm is aiming big. Its goals include a revenue target of $125 billion by 2029, an aggressive pursuit of authority across the market.

Earlier this year, OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round, still the largest private technology deal ever recorded. At a valuation nearly 30 times its current revenue, expectations are sky-high. 

The company counts Microsoft, SoftBank, Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive among its key backers. These are investors used to backing winners and pushing for aggressive returns.

Since launching ChatGPT for consumers in late 2022, OpenAI has expanded fast. Business tools followed in 2023, and the user base hasn’t stopped growing. 

As of March 2025, more than 500 million people were using OpenAI’s tools weekly. The number of paying business customers has hit 3 million, climbing from 2 million in February.

Internally, the growth is celebrated, but the pressure is equally intense. OpenAI’s model requires constant investment, cash, computing power, and talent. Every expansion move must be backed with infrastructure that can keep pace with demand.

Even with the success, profitability is not certain and the company has not confirmed if it’s near breaking even. 

If the deal goes through, it would more than double the company’s previous valuation of $157 billion, achieved in October 2024.

Sources familiar with the discussions reveal that Japanese investment giant SoftBank is leading the negotiations, with plans to contribute between $15 billion and $25 billion into OpenAI. 

The investment is expected to support OpenAI’s ongoing expansion and financials, particularly its artificial intelligence infrastructure project, Project Stargate.

Project Stargate, a joint effort between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, aims to build large-scale AI data centres across the United States. The initiative is designed to enhance AI computing infrastructure and ensure OpenAI remains at the top of artificial intelligence development.

Even with the growth, OpenAI has been dealing with financial challenges. Reports disclose the company recorded losses of approximately $5 billion in 2024, against revenues of $3.7 billion. The fresh capital injection could help sustain operations and accelerate research and development efforts.

Meanwhile, competition in the AI industry is increasing. Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has gained attention in the U.S. market, flaring discussions about cost-efficient AI development. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, acknowledged the competition, stating, “This is a reminder of the level of competition and the need for democratic AI to win.”

If OpenAI successfully secures the funding, it would make the company one of the most valuable AI companies globally.

The funding, led by Thrive Capital, will help OpenAI strengthen its cutting-edge AI research and bolster its computing infrastructure, as the company continues to build AI tools designed to solve complex global problems. 

Previous funding rounds were seen as insufficient capital which couldn’t sustain the company’s lofty mission. However, this fresh influx of funds aims to address those issues, backing OpenAI’s ability to maintain its pace of innovation.

Alongside Thrive Capital’s lead investment, the funding round saw participation from industry giants like Microsoft, Nvidia, and SoftBank, among others. 

Microsoft, which has been a long-time partner of OpenAI, committed close to $1 billion. Nvidia contributed $100 million, while SoftBank made a pledge of $500 million.

The newly raised funds will be used to expand OpenAI’s research into frontier AI and increase its computational resources, addressing one of the main challenges in AI development – access to massive amounts of processing power. 

The company has previously invested billions into AI model training and operational costs, with CEO Sam Altman stating that their GPT-4 model alone cost over $100 million to develop.

As it stands, OpenAI has more than 250 million users worldwide utilising ChatGPT for a wide range of purposes, from boosting creativity to improving business productivity. The company’s AI models have been incorporated into various products and services, with Microsoft integrating them into its suite of productivity tools and Apple leveraging ChatGPT within its AI ecosystem. 

OpenAI’s revenue is also expected to soar, with projections signifying it could reach $100 billion by 2029. Currently, ChatGPT generates huge income, with annual revenue estimated at $2.7 billion, according to recent reports. 

Despite its dominant market position, OpenAI is not without its challenges. Competition is fierce, with companies like Anthropic, xAI, and Cohere emerging as rivals. OpenAI is also facing pressures to increase its prices for services like ChatGPT Plus, which could see its monthly fee rise to $44 by 2029. 

Again, the company’s governance structure has come under review, with Altman noting possible changes in its nonprofit status to attract more investment. Investors in this round reportedly have the option to withdraw their funds if OpenAI does not make this transition within the next two years.

OpenAI’s focus remains on making AI a universally accessible resource. The company is open to working with governments and partners across the globe to maximise the potential of AI while ensuring it benefits society at large. 

However, internal changes are also underway, with several key executives, including Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, having recently departed from the company.

This funding round is expected to boost the company’s valuation to $150 billion, surpassing the $86 billion it reached during a tender offer earlier this year, placing it among the world’s highest-valued private companies.

The anticipated funding round is said to be led by Thrive Capital, with participation from Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest backer. Discussions are also reportedly underway with other tech firms, such as Apple and Nvidia, though none of these companies have confirmed their involvement. 

In addition to the equity investment, OpenAI is also exploring a potential $5 billion credit facility with banks, indicating a multi-faceted approach to expanding its financial resources.

Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI has been significant, having already invested over $13 billion into the company since 2019. The collaboration includes contributions in Azure cloud services, which have been vital to powering OpenAI’s growing infrastructure needs.

OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT, has become a cornerstone of the company’s success. Launched in 2022, the chatbot’s ability to generate human-like responses has captivated users and also stimulated renewed interest in artificial intelligence across Silicon Valley.

This interest has led to deepened competition in the AI space, with companies racing to secure a foothold in the rapidly advancing field.

The influx of capital comes at a time when many high-growth tech startups are shying away from public listings, preferring to remain private to avoid the risks associated with volatile stock markets. 

This strategy is further supported by alternative financing options, such as private equity and venture funds, which allow companies like OpenAI to continue scaling without the pressures of a public offering.

In recent years, artificial intelligence companies have attracted increasing amounts of investment, as the technology has evolved at a commendable pace. 

Startups focused on generative AI, in particular, are drawing billions in funding as investors seek to capitalise on the potential for these systems to reshape industries. 

Venture capital firm Thrive Capital will lead the funding round, with a commitment of approximately $1 billion per WSJ. This follows Thrive’s previous investments in OpenAI. Microsoft, a key partner and investor in the AI company, is also expected to contribute to this latest round of funding. 

This anticipated funding round is the largest capital infusion OpenAI has received since January 2023, when Microsoft invested nearly $10 billion into the company. These investments have helped in supporting OpenAI’s projects, including the development of its flagship products like GPT-4 and the language model-based assistant Sora.

OpenAI has however faced financial challenges. Despite generating an estimated $3.4 billion in revenue earlier this year, the company is on track to incur substantial losses, projected to reach nearly $5 billion by the end of 2024. 

This financial issue is largely attributed to the high costs associated with AI training and the expansion of its workforce, with the company reportedly spending over $8.5 billion to date on these steps.

Founded in 2015 by Sam Altman and other co-founders, OpenAI was initially a non-profit organisation focused on advancing AI in a manner beneficial to humanity. Over the years, it has evolved into an important addition to the tech industry, attracting major investments and partnerships. 

Its products, particularly ChatGPT, have changed how individuals and businesses interact with AI, further strengthening OpenAI’s goals and objectives in relation to the global impact of artificial intelligence.

With the new capital, OpenAI may further enhance its technologies, expand its product offerings, and solidify its works in the AI space. However, the challenge remains in balancing profitability with its original mission of ensuring that AI technologies are developed and deployed for the greater good.