AI Valuations Ranking: Anthropic's $965B Tops OpenAI's $852B

Anthropic passes OpenAI in the private AI valuation rankings

For most of the generative AI boom, OpenAI was the most valuable company in the field. That changed this year. On May 28, 2026, Anthropic said it had raised $65 billion in a Series H round at a post-money valuation of $965 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI, whose last mark was $852 billion in March.11 Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital led the round.13

Nearly five months later, those two numbers still head every serious ranking of AI companies. Neither has been officially revised. What has changed is the market activity surrounding them: secondary trades, IPO filings, new funding talks and a wider pool of startups raising at prices that would have looked unthinkable two years ago. The two headline figures are less settled than they appear. The way they were set says more about where AI capital is going than the gap between them does.

How the two labs got here

Anthropic's rise was fast even by the standards of this cycle. The company's published post-money valuations went from $61.5 billion in its Series E to $183 billion, then $380 billion, then $965 billion, a climb of just under fifteen months.12 The jump from the February Series G to the May Series H alone more than doubled the company's value in about three months.14

OpenAI's route was different. It closed a $122 billion round on March 31 at an $852 billion post-money valuation, up from the $110 billion it had first announced. For the first time it also sold to individual investors through bank channels, raising $3 billion that way.1 Amazon committed $50 billion, while Nvidia and SoftBank each committed $30 billion.2 One detail matters: $35 billion of Amazon's commitment reportedly depends on OpenAI going public or reaching AGI.9 That makes the record round partly a conditional promise rather than cash in hand.

OpenAI's raise was nearly twice the size of Anthropic's, yet it produced the lower valuation. That points to the main story of 2026. Investors are paying for revenue momentum and enterprise traction, not just for scale or brand.

The revenue figures don't agree

The outlets tracking these companies broadly agree on the valuations. They disagree sharply on revenue, and that changes what the valuations mean.

For Anthropic, several trackers use a $47 billion run rate from around the Series H, which implies about 20.5 times revenue.1318 Others cite a $65 billion run rate by the end of July, which brings the multiple down to roughly 15 times.1719 OpenAI's figures vary even more. At the March close, estimates put annualized revenue near $25 billion, about 34 times the valuation.2 Later reporting says it topped $40 billion in August and was nearing $70 billion by late September, according to Reuters, which would cut the multiple to about 12 times.3 Another tracker uses roughly $50 billion as of October.5

Quarterly figures may be the most reliable comparison. Anthropic's preliminary second-quarter revenue was reported at more than $11.5 billion, compared with $6.7 billion for OpenAI. OpenAI also posted a $12.3 billion operating loss in that quarter.195 On that basis, Anthropic's lead looks earned. It has been bringing in more money, and roughly 70–75% of it comes from usage-based API and Claude Code spending rather than consumer subscriptions.14 OpenAI still has far more consumer reach: chatgpt.com drew 5.32 billion visits in June compared with 968 million for claude.ai.19 ChatGPT reported 1.2 billion weekly users in September.5

In short, the rankings put Anthropic first, and the quarterly revenue data supports that order. OpenAI's lower valuation increasingly looks stale rather than like a judgment against the company.

The official numbers lag the market

Both figures are already dated. OpenAI held its valuation flat through a roughly $7 billion employee tender completed on August 10, funded by the company itself rather than by new investors.103 Bloomberg reported in late September that OpenAI was in early talks to raise at least $30 billion at about $1.4 trillion.35

Anthropic has reportedly traded above $1.1 trillion on Nasdaq Private Market in August and September.3 It has also filed a confidential prospectus that, according to Reuters, points to a listing valued at around $2 trillion. The offering is now expected after the November midterms, following an earlier October target that slipped.16 Bloomberg has said the IPO could come as soon as mid-November.19 OpenAI filed confidentially on June 8, but its finance chief has reportedly signalled a 2027 listing.8

This is why rankings differ so much. One frontier-lab list now puts Anthropic at $1.8–2.1 trillion and OpenAI at $1.3–1.5 trillion, using IPO indications and fundraising targets instead of closed rounds.30 A list published in March even had OpenAI on top at $1.2–1.3 trillion.26 Readers should treat $965 billion and $852 billion as the last confirmed prices, not as estimates of what either company is worth today.

Below the top two

After the two leaders, the drop is steep. A widely cited ranking of the most valuable AI companies puts xAI third at $230–250 billion, Databricks at about $190 billion, Prometheus at $41 billion, Crusoe at $30.9 billion, Etched at $21 billion, Fluidstack at $18 billion and Fireworks AI at $17.5 billion.21 Estimates for the next tier vary. Other tallies cite Cursor maker Anysphere at about $60 billion and Cognition at $48 billion.26 Cognition's $2 billion Series E in September and Mistral AI's €3 billion Series D at more than €21 billion are among the larger deals outside the top labs.22

The size of individual rounds shows how concentrated this market is. Of the 585 US rounds one tracker had logged for 2026 as of mid-October, worth $381.5 billion in total, OpenAI's $122 billion and Anthropic's $65 billion and $30 billion rounds made up about half.23 Earlier tallies said AI took 81% of a record $297 billion in first-quarter venture funding.28 Prometheus, the AI venture co-founded by Jeff Bezos, raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation with support from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, which shows that large financial firms are now writing venture-sized checks.2327

New unicorns keep coming, but more of them are in infrastructure than in apps. In October alone, TypeSafe AI raised an $870 million Series A at $7.5 billion, Arena raised $200 million at $3.1 billion, and Nous Research raised $90 million at $1.5 billion.25 Compute and inference companies such as Crusoe, Baseten, Fireworks and Fluidstack fill much of this year's list of largest rounds.21 That pattern makes sense: when the top labs raise tens of billions, much of it goes to the companies that supply compute.

Acquisitions and structural deals

Outright acquisitions have played a smaller role than funding rounds, but a few structural deals have changed the rankings. xAI was merged into SpaceX in a February stock deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX's June IPO then put it at about $2.1 trillion.3 That move takes xAI's standalone value out of private-market comparisons, which is one reason estimates for it range from $200 billion to $250 billion.421 World Labs has been valued at an $8.2 billion announced acquisition price in spatial intelligence.30 Manus has raised more than $500 million after what one tracker describes as the unwinding of a deal with Meta.25

The main point is that the biggest exits ahead are expected to be IPOs, not acquisitions. At close to a trillion dollars, Anthropic and OpenAI are too large for almost any buyer, so public markets are the only realistic exit.

The skeptics' case

Not everyone accepts these prices. Michael Burry has argued that Anthropic's private valuation is large enough to buy 78 profitable S&P 500 companies. He contrasts it with UPS, the largest inflation-adjusted pre-IPO valuation of the dot-com era at $119 billion.16 Some trackers also point to a sharper risk lower down the rankings: Thinking Machines Lab is discussing a valuation near $40 billion on run-rate revenue just above $100 million.30

The circular nature of the funding is a fair worry. Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon sell compute to OpenAI while also funding it.2 Memory makers including Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron appear on Anthropic's Series H investor list.15 When suppliers fund their own customers, part of the valuation reflects a bet on future orders, not only on the lab itself.

The two leaders do differ. Anthropic's revenue is growing fast enough that its multiple has come down even as its valuation rose.17 OpenAI's flat August tender and its reported $1.4 trillion target show that the market still believes in its consumer scale.3 The real test comes when either company starts trading publicly. A listing near $2 trillion would make the current private rankings look cheap. A weak IPO would make the past year's private marks look much too high.