Anthropic is in early talks to raise at least US$30 billion at a valuation of more than US$900 billion, according to fresh reporting from Bloomberg Technology on Wednesday, a deal that would value the Claude maker higher than OpenAI and could rank as the largest funding round in private market history.
Reporter Natasha Mascarenes, who broke the story alongside colleague Ed Ludlow, said the round could move quickly despite no term sheet being signed. "Our understanding is that the investor interest far exceeds how much Anthropic will actually end up accepting from investors," Mascarenes told the Bloomberg Tech audience, "and so you are seeing them maybe be picky on valuation lead investor."
The pace of the deal marks a sharp shift in tone from the company. Bloomberg's hosts noted that just two or three weeks earlier Anthropic had rebuffed similar approaches.
"Anthropic feels comfortable now with this valuation," Mascarenes said. "We've gone from a place in just the last two or three weeks where they rebuffed off and said nah, you know, we don't want to do this. But the main thing that's happened in the interim is that Claude continues to have momentum, enterprise adoption of Anthropic, and then there's the government angle."
She described the development as a turning point for how the AI race is being priced. "This is a massive narrative shift around Anthropic and we've been covering it relentlessly," she said. The reporting also flagged a closing window that could land before the end of May. "Let's say Anthropic closes this round as per our sources as soon as the end of this month," Mascarenes said. "Does this change their IPO timeline? Does it need to change their IPO timeline?"
The valuation gap matters because it would put Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, which has dominated headlines and capital raises since 2023. Just weeks ago Anthropic was reported to be flipping past OpenAI at US$850 billion in secondary markets. A US$900 billion primary round would lock that narrative in with real money.
The other side of the story is the secondary market chaos around private AI shares. On the same Bloomberg segment, host Caroline Hyde flagged a new Anthropic blog post warning that fraudulent share certificates were appearing in some unauthorised marketplaces. "Anthropic seems to be trading on a secondary market and they call them stock scams in some areas," Hyde said. "They say it's issuing fraudulent share certificates."
Anduril founder Brian Schimpf, also on the broadcast, said his own company is now battling similar issues. "We try to control our cap table tightly and make sure that, you know, every investor" goes through proper channels, he said, after his firm closed a US$61 billion valuation round of its own. The implication: capital chasing AI is now so dense that even tightly held private names are being copied and resold.
Mascarenes added a stark sizing note. SpaceX is widely expected to come to market with its own raise in June or July, and that overhang lingers in the background of every AI round. "It depends what happens with SpaceX June, July," the Bloomberg team noted on air. "Does that suck oxygen out of the room? But again, if the private markets provide, what's the need to go public?"
For investors in fintech and infrastructure exposure, the takeaway is sharp. Public markets are not the only place pricing is being set. A US$900 billion private mark, if it closes, will reset comps for every AI-adjacent business raising in the next 12 months and pull more capital out of crowded public AI trades and into late-stage private rounds.