Anthropic has closed a deal to raise $13 billion from investors in a new funding round that nearly triples its valuation to $183 billion, including dollars raised — a larger-than-expected haul that makes the artificial intelligence company one of the most valuable startups in the world.
The financing, one of the largest to date for an AI company, was led by investment firm Iconiq Capital alongside co-leads Fidelity Management and Research Co. and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other participants in the round included Singapore’s GIC and Insight Partners. The Qatar Investment Authority, or QIA, is also part of the round, the company said.
The total funding raised was higher than initially expected, due to strong demand from investors hoping to get a stake in one of the best-known AI companies. Anthropic initially held talks to raise $5 billion, before lifting that target to $10 billion, Bloomberg previously reported, and eventually landing at the $13 billion figure.
In a statement Tuesday, the company said the latest investment “reflects Anthropic’s unprecedented velocity and reinforces our position as the leading intelligence platform for enterprises, developers, and power users.”
Founded in 2021 by former employees of OpenAI, Anthropic has positioned itself as a reliable, safety-conscious firm that users can trust. While it’s smaller than OpenAI, the company’s Claude chatbot and underlying technology have gained traction with enterprise customers in sectors like finance and health care, as well as with developers.
Anthropic has recently seen rapid growth: The company said its run-rate revenue has increased from around $1 billion at the beginning of 2025, to more than $5 billion in August.
Today, the company has 300,000 business customers, it said in the statement. Anthropic also said its coding tool, Claude Code, generates more than $500 million in yearly run-rate revenue, and that its usage has grown more than 10 times in three months.
“Enterprise leaders tell us what we’re seeing firsthand — Claude is reliable, built on a trustworthy foundation, and guided by leaders truly focused on the long term,” Iconiq partner Divesh Makan said in the statement. He added that the firm’s bet on the company, “reflects our belief in their values and their ability to shape the future of responsible AI.”
Even as Anthropic has grown, it faces intense competition. In August, OpenAI released its long-awaited GPT-5 model, which is designed to be more capable at coding, a use that has been one of the key selling points for Anthropic’s AI system. Other firms including Alphabet Inc.’s Google are also building tools to help programmers streamline the process of writing and debugging code. Amazon.com Inc. and Google previously invested in Anthropic.
Companies devoting large sums of money to AI development include Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc., the latter of which has stepped up spending on talent and infrastructure. OpenAI is in early talks about a potential sale of stock for current and former employees at a valuation of about $500 billion, Bloomberg News has reported, a deal that would make it the world’s most valuable startup. And Elon Musk is said to be seeking a valuation of as much as $200 billion for his AI startup, xAI.
In 2024, Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei predicted that the cost of building cutting-edge AI models could reach as much as $10 billion by this year or next.
Anthropic was valued at $61.5 billion earlier this year in a $3.5 billion funding round led by Lightspeed. The company said it will use the new funding to meet growing enterprise demand, further safety research, and accelerate plans for international expansion.
“We are seeing exponential growth in demand across our entire customer base,” Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said in a statement. “This financing demonstrates investors’ extraordinary confidence in our financial performance and the strength of their collaboration with us to continue fueling our unprecedented growth.”
With the latest deal, Anthropic is joining some of its rivals in turning to deep-pocketed Middle Eastern backers like QIA for funding. Sovereign wealth funds typically have more assets at their disposal to invest than traditional venture capital firms.
In a recent memo to employees, first reported by Wired, Amodei acknowledged the need to raise funds from the Middle East after having previously voiced concerns about taking money from authoritarian countries. “Unfortunately, I think ‘No bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on,” he wrote.
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