OpenAI's Top Three Backers Jointly Bet Against Rival, Anthropic, in $30 Billion Financing Deal This Month

According to Dynamic Beating monitoring, the terms of Anthropic's $30 billion new funding round have been finalized, with a pre-money valuation of $900 billion, and the completion of the transaction is expected within this month.

The lead investor lineup is the most noteworthy information of this funding round. Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, and Altimeter Capital jointly lead the round, with each contributing at least $2 billion. Three of them are also major shareholders of OpenAI: Dragoneer invested nearly $3 billion in OpenAI last year, Sequoia has been betting on ChatGPT since 2021, and Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner has publicly supported Sam Altman in podcasts and interviews multiple times. Now, by writing a big check for a valuation that is about to surpass OpenAI's competitor, they are essentially using real money to show that AI operates under a duopoly model, rather than winner-takes-all.

This funding round came quickly. The dealmaker is Anthropic's first CFO, Krishna Rao, who joined in May 2024. His most famous move before this was negotiating a $1 billion lifeline for Airbnb when the pandemic broke out in 2020. After investors approached him last month, he initiated negotiations and locked in the terms within two weeks. Google and Amazon are not expected to participate in this round. Anthropic is still in discussions with other investors for the remaining shares, and the final terms may still be adjusted before the official announcement.