Two weeks ago, defense startup Anduril raised a Series H round—$5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, shocking the defense world as the largest defense-tech round in history.
On Thursday, Anthropic had its own Series H, but one from a different planet.
In venture capital-speak, a “unicorn” is a private company valued at $1 billion and above. The decacorn and hectocorn are valued about $10 billion and $100 billion, respectively. So what do you call a trillion-dollar private company? That’s the question Anthropic flirted with on Thursday while announcing a rarely seen Series H funding round.
The AI startup raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, eclipsing its rival OpenAI in the race to own the technology of the century. Its value is roughly the GDP of Switzerland, more than the combined market cap of every U.S. airline, or more than the entire U.S. defense budget.
Series H rounds are so rare that most of the companies that have raised them are recognizable names: Facebook, Lyft, Discord, Slack.
Databricks just hit a $134 billion valuation in February after grinding through Series I, J, and K in roughly two-and-a-half years. Stripe made it to Series I in 2023, but only to raise $6.5 billion the company said it didn’t need—the round existed so employees could cash out and pay their tax bills, the company said.
Anthropic almost surely won’t need a Series I. The company is reportedly preparing for an IPO in the coming months, alongside rival OpenAI, which is expected to file its confidential prospectus within weeks. Anthropic’s run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month, the company said, up from a reported $7 billion in calendar 2025. The company has said it expects to be cash-flow positive by 2028, a target it pushed back earlier this year as compute and training costs continued to climb—even as businesses gorge themselves on tokens in the race to implement AI into their strategies.
Roughly $15 billion of the Series H consists of previously committed money from hyperscalers, including the $5 billion announced by Amazon in April. Strategic infrastructure partners Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron also participated, alongside Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D.E. Shaw, DST Global, and Fidelity.
