The $900 Billion Giant: How Anthropic Got So Big, So Fast

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DealBook|How Anthropic Got So Big, So Fast

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/business/dealbook/anthropic-ai-openai.html

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An urban building draped in large panels that say, “Claude. Keep thinking.”

Andrew here. Anthropic is now more valuable than OpenAI, something Silicon Valley wouldn’t have expected a year ago. We go behind the numbers — and outline the risks the new leader in A.I. faces.

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The numbers behind Anthropic’s rise

A year ago, the biggest and buzziest artificial intelligence start-up around was undoubtedly OpenAI. That’s no longer the case.

Anthropic has taken that crown with its $65 billion fund-raising round. How the company went from also-ran to 900-pound gorilla is a reflection of the current state of the A.I. race, and it raises questions about what comes next.

Where things stand: Anthropic is valued at $900 billion, while OpenAI was last valued at $730 billion, not including the $122 billion it had just raised.

Behind Anthropic’s ascent: The company’s Claude models were consistently highly regarded. But by November, Anthropic’s Claude Code programming tool had become exponentially better at automating software development, driving a surge in adoption.