Anthropic closed a $65 billion funding round on Thursday that lifted its post-money valuation to roughly $965 billion, pushing the maker of the Claude chatbot past OpenAI to become the most valuable private artificial intelligence (AI) company on the planet. Several headlines tagged the deal as Elon Musk-backed. Musk did not put a dollar into it.
The commercial tie the world’s richest man has with Anthropic looks more like a lease than an equity stake. His rocket company rents the lab some of its computing power, and barely three months ago Musk was publicly calling Anthropic “evil.” Sorting the backer myth from the landlord reality changes how durable this milestone actually looks.
The Number That Cleared OpenAI
The raise was co-led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, with Capital Group, Coatue and D1 Capital Partners among the names on the term sheet. It lands roughly three months after Anthropic’s $380 billion Series G round in February, a jump that few private companies have ever matched in a single quarter.
The new mark clears its chief rival’s most recent benchmark. OpenAI was last pegged near a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion raise reported in the spring. At $965 billion, Anthropic tops that by more than a hundred billion, and it does so on a smaller cumulative funding history.
Pace is what stands out here. Moving from $380 billion to nearly a trillion dollars inside three months is the sort of repricing that tends to come right before a public listing, and the company is widely reported to be preparing an initial public offering (IPO).
| Metric | Anthropic | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| Latest post-money valuation | ~$965 billion | ~$852 billion |
| Latest round size | $65 billion (Series H) | $122 billion |
| Flagship AI product | Claude (Opus 4.8) | ChatGPT |
Why the Musk-Backed Label Misreads the Cap Table
Run down the investor roster and one name is missing. The round drew a cluster of growth and crossover funds, plus a long tail of institutions writing checks. None of them is connected to Musk.
- Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer and Greenoaks, the co-leads on the deal
- Sequoia Capital and Capital Group
- Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, ICONIQ and XN
- Fidelity, Blackstone, Jane Street, Temasek, General Catalyst and Lightspeed Venture Partners
Anthropic’s strategic backers sit elsewhere. Amazon is an early investor and primary cloud partner, and Google holds a stake too. Both compete with Musk’s xAI, the lab he built to chase OpenAI and Anthropic at once. The cap table, in other words, tells a simpler story: Musk put in nothing.
His posture toward Anthropic has been adversarial, not supportive. Musk co-founded OpenAI, later turned on it, and spent the past year in a long-running courtroom fight over OpenAI’s nonprofit roots while standing up xAI as a rival. As recently as this spring he was calling Anthropic “evil” in front of his followers.
So where does the “Musk-backed” tag come from? It springs from a single thread, confirmed in Anthropic’s own funding and product announcements: a large compute deal between Anthropic and Musk’s SpaceX. That contract is real. It is also the opposite of an investment.
The SpaceX Deal Makes Musk a Landlord
Earlier this month, Anthropic agreed to take computing capacity from SpaceX, the rocket company Musk controls. That arrangement, not the funding round, is the actual Musk-Anthropic link, and it flows in the direction nobody expected.
What the Colossus Contract Covers
The deal hands Anthropic access to the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, a facility stacked with more than 220,000 NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs, the chips that train large AI models) and over 300 megawatts of power. Anthropic laid out the terms in its note on higher Claude usage limits and the SpaceX agreement, and even floated interest in helping build computing capacity in space.
Here is the part the “backed” framing buries. Colossus is the flagship training cluster tied to xAI and SpaceX, the same regional buildout that has already drawn noise complaints from residents near Musk’s Memphis-area data centers. Anthropic is paying to train on the infrastructure of a company designed to beat it.
Where the Lease Terms Get Murky
A regulatory filing from SpaceX (an S-1, the document companies file before going public) describes a customer paying $1.25 billion a month through May 2029. Stretched across roughly three years, that contract would be worth about $45 billion.
Musk tells a shorter story. He posted on X that SpaceX “has not committed to leasing Colossus for years,” describing the setup instead as a 180-day lease with a 90-day mutual cancellation notice afterward. A six-month deal at the same monthly rate caps near $7.5 billion, a fraction of the multiyear figure, and leaves Anthropic’s access to a slice of its compute genuinely uncertain.
Claude’s Enterprise Run Rate Did the Heavy Lifting
Investors are not paying nearly a trillion dollars for a chatbot demo. They are paying for a revenue curve, and Anthropic says its annualized revenue grew more than fivefold over the past year as enterprises wired Claude into daily operations.
- $47 billion annualized revenue run rate the company now reports
- $10 billion roughly where annual revenue sat a year earlier
- $380 billion the valuation just three months ago, at February’s Series G
Growth is concentrated in business customers using Claude for coding, research, support and workflow automation. Anthropic has pushed the model into regulated corners too, including a partnership that connects Claude to patient medical records. Investors who co-led the round point to exactly that pull.
Claude’s latest advancements have driven large-scale adoption among the world’s most demanding organizations.
That was Brad Gerstner, chief executive of Altimeter Capital, one of the lead investors, speaking in Anthropic’s funding statement. Chief financial officer Krishna Rao added that demand for products like Claude Code and Cowork now runs at a level the company calls indispensable to its customers.
The Dependency Sitting Under a $965 Billion Price Tag
Strip away the funding euphoria and a structural question remains. Anthropic’s training increasingly leans on hardware it does not own, supplied by partners and by an outright competitor, through a compute partnership xAI describes on its own terms.
If Musk’s short-lease characterization holds, a chunk of that capacity could be renegotiated within months, right as Anthropic courts public-market investors. A lab preparing an IPO does not want a key input controlled by a rival who can hand back 90 days’ notice.
The economics bite either way. At more than a billion dollars a month, compute rent alone would swallow a meaningful slice of the run rate before salaries, safety research or the data centers Anthropic is building with Amazon and Google enter the math.
If the Claude run rate keeps compounding and the listing arrives on schedule, that rent will read as the cost of winning a land grab. If the lease lapses or growth stalls before the IPO prices, the same number that crowned Anthropic this week becomes the one skeptics use to question it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Anthropic Backed by Elon Musk?
No. Musk is not an investor in Anthropic. The latest $65 billion round was co-led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. Musk’s only tie is commercial: his company SpaceX sells Anthropic access to computing power, and he runs xAI, a direct competitor.
How Much Is Anthropic Worth Now?
Anthropic reached a post-money valuation of about $965 billion after closing a $65 billion round on May 28, 2026. That places it ahead of OpenAI, which was last valued near $852 billion, making Anthropic the most valuable private AI company.
What Is the Anthropic and SpaceX Compute Deal?
Anthropic agreed to use capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, which holds more than 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs. SpaceX’s filing cites a fee of $1.25 billion a month through May 2029, while Musk has described it publicly as a 180-day lease with cancellation rights afterward.
Is Anthropic Publicly Traded?
Not yet. Anthropic remains a private company, so retail investors cannot buy its shares directly. It is widely reported to be preparing an initial public offering, which would be among the largest tech listings ever if it proceeds at this valuation.
Who Makes Claude and What Is Claude Opus 4.8?
Anthropic makes Claude. Alongside the funding news, the company launched Claude Opus 4.8, an upgrade it says performs better at coding, agentic tasks and professional work than earlier models in the Opus class.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Private-company valuations, funding terms and IPO plans carry significant risk and can change quickly. Consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision. Figures are accurate as of publication on May 29, 2026.
