Anthropic’s victory lap

TL;DR: OpenAI may be thinking, “Anthropic, are you tired? Because you’ve been running laps in my mind all day.” While we’re not typically in the business of quoting old pickup lines, Anthropic did have a monster day on Thursday, lapping OpenAI on valuation, posting five times revenue growth, and dropping a new model that leads nearly every major benchmark.

What happened: Yesterday, Anthropic announced it closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion valuation, which is the fastest valuation growth in VC history, according to an analysis. And it also released the Opus 4.8 model, which it says surpasses similar OpenAI and Gemini models on agentic coding and financial analysis and includes a much cheaper Fast mode.

What drove the numbers: Anthropic’s revenue grew 5x in the first five months of this year to a $47 billion annualized run rate, jumping from $4 billion last July and surpassing OpenAI's estimated $30–$33 billion run rate, according to reporting from the Information.

So far, Anthropic’s main growth engine has been enterprise customers willing to pay a high price tag, and per the Information, Anthropic also expects to post its first-ever operating profit in Q2. (OpenAI, by contrast, will likely stay unprofitable for a while, given it “subsidizes the cost of running a consumer chatbot for hundreds of millions of nonpaying users.”) Other analyses also suggest Anthropic is coming for OpenAI on consumer usage and business adoption.

To put it plainly: This is a total reversal from just six months ago, when Anthropic was posting less than half of OpenAI's sales.

The IPO race: Both companies are expected to go public this year. While OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar was worried that CEO Sam Altman was rushing to go public, now, Anthropic’s latest numbers may change her calculus. Public investors will undoubtedly compare both companies head-to-head, and despite what these astronomical valuations imply, there’s only so much money to go around. Anthropic's five times growth, path to profitability, and almost $1 trillion valuation are likely to overshadow OpenAI's slower growth and deep losses—especially if Anthropic files first.

Bottom line: Anthropic has built the stronger financial story heading into the most-watched IPO race in tech. And that’s before its most powerful model, Mythos, has even shipped. —AC

Also at Anthropic:

• Here’s what it actually takes to land a job there.
• A big threat to Anthropic’s recent dominance? “AI sticker shock” in corporate America.
• Opus 4.8 is “more honest.”