Anthropic, the AI safety startup behind the Claude family of language models, has completed a $5 billion Series E financing round that values the company at $60 billion. The round was co-led by Google, which invested $2 billion, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Spark Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and several sovereign wealth funds.
The fundraise comes as Anthropic annual recurring revenue has surpassed $2 billion, up from $500 million just 12 months ago. The company attributes the explosive growth to enterprise adoption of Claude for customer service, code generation, document analysis, and research assistance. Major enterprise clients include Amazon Web Services, Notion, DuckDuckGo, and over 200 Fortune 500 companies.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the funding will be used to train next-generation models, expand the company computing infrastructure, and invest in AI safety research. The company plans to double its research team to over 1,500 employees by the end of 2026 and is opening new offices in London, Tokyo, and Singapore to support its growing international customer base.
The valuation makes Anthropic one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world, trailing only SpaceX and ByteDance among venture-backed startups. The rapid appreciation reflects both the company strong commercial traction and investor confidence in its safety-first approach to AI development, which has resonated with enterprise customers who prioritize reliability and responsible deployment.
Industry observers note that the AI startup funding landscape has become increasingly bifurcated. While a handful of frontier model companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI command enormous valuations, many smaller AI startups are struggling to raise capital. Venture capital firm Sequoia recently estimated that AI startups collectively need to generate $600 billion in annual revenue to justify current valuations, a figure that has raised concerns about a potential bubble in the sector.
