San Francisco: AI startup Anthropic is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise a fresh round of funding led by Iconiq Capital, which would value the company at $170 billion, according to Bloomberg and CNBC. The round could bring in between $3 billion and $5 billion, more than doubling its last valuation of $61.5 billion.
The potential fundraise would mark a significant leap for Anthropic, positioning it closer to OpenAI’s $300 billion valuation as the race to build next-generation general-purpose AI models intensifies.
The news follows an earlier report by the Financial Times that cited a possible valuation of $150 billion, with investors from the Middle East expressing interest. CEO Dario Amodei, who was previously hesitant to pursue funding from the region, is now reportedly open to such investment — a strategic pivot mirrored by OpenAI, which is collaborating with Emirati firm G42 to establish a large-scale data center in Abu Dhabi.
As competition heightens in Silicon Valley, major players including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Anthropic continue to pour resources into building more powerful and scalable AI systems. While current efforts focus on broad, general-purpose models, there is growing momentum toward the development of specialised AI tools tailored for niche applications.
The anticipated launch of GPT-5 by OpenAI, expected in August, adds further urgency to the funding push among rival firms.
Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI has achieved profitability. Both companies are using significant amounts of capital to offset the high costs of computing infrastructure necessary for training advanced AI models. Anthropic is currently backed by tech giants Amazon and Google.
