OpenAI’s three biggest backers place bets against their rivals in unison, while Anthropic secures $30 billion in funding for delivery this month

According to Beating Monitoring, the terms of Anthropic’s new $30 billion funding round have already been finalized, with a pre-investment valuation of $900 billion, and the deal is expected to be completed within this month. The lead-investor lineup is the most worth watching part of this round of financing. Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, and Altimeter Capital are jointly leading the investment, with each contributing at least $2 billion. Among them, three are also major shareholders in OpenAI: Dragoneer invested nearly $3 billion in OpenAI last year, Sequoia has been backing ChatGPT since 2021, and Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner has repeatedly publicly supported Sam Altman in podcasts and interviews. Now, with them writing large checks at the same time for competitors whose valuations are about to overtake OpenAI, it amounts to making a clear statement with hard cash that AI is a duopoly rather than a winner-takes-all situation.

This funding round has come unusually fast. The operator is Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s first CFO, who joined in May 2024. Previously, his most well-known episode was brokering a line-of-credit emergency deal worth $1 billion for Airbnb during the 2020 pandemic outbreak. After investors proactively reached out to him last month, he initiated negotiations and locked in the terms within two weeks. Google and Amazon are expected not to participate in this round. Anthropic is still negotiating the remaining shares with other investors, and the final terms may still be adjusted before the announcement.