Venture capital giant Sequoia is joining Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and U.S. investor Coatue in a massive funding round for Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, aiming to raise $25 billion at a $350 billion valuation, the Financial Times reported Sunday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to the report, GIC and Coatue are each expected to contribute $1.5 billion toward the round, with Sequoia anchoring the syndicate. Representatives for Anthropic, Sequoia, GIC, and Coatue did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Anthropic has emerged as one of the leading names in generative AI, attracting global attention for its Claude models, which are positioned as enterprise-friendly alternatives to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The startup last raised $13 billion in a Series F round in early 2025 at a $183 billion valuation and had also secured commitments for up to $15 billion from Microsoft and Nvidia. The proposed $25 billion round would not only more than double the company’s prior valuation but also mark one of the largest private funding rounds in the technology sector to date.
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The astronomical valuations come amid low return on investment (ROI) for many AI startups. OpenAI, for example, has burned through more than $8 billion in 2025 alone while generating relatively modest revenue from subscription services such as ChatGPT Plus.
Analysts caution that much of the AI funding frenzy has been driven by investor confidence in the technology’s long-term transformative potential rather than current profitability. Investors appear willing to tolerate years of negative returns in the belief that AI could one day redefine entire industries, from enterprise software to cloud services and digital automation.
Sequoia’s participation underscores the continued faith of established venture capital in AI, even as valuations reach unprecedented heights. Founded in 1972, Sequoia has backed some of the most successful tech companies in history, including Google, Apple, YouTube, and Cisco. Its involvement signals strong confidence in Anthropic’s technology, enterprise adoption potential, and ability to compete with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and other generative AI leaders.
The infusion of capital will allow Anthropic to expand its AI research, improve model robustness, scale cloud infrastructure, and accelerate enterprise sales and licensing. Market observers highlight that enterprise adoption has become the primary pathway for monetization, as subscription-based offerings, custom AI solutions, and cloud-powered deployments begin to generate measurable revenue streams.
However, given the scale of the funding and the current state of AI profitability, Anthropic will face intense pressure to convert capital into sustainable revenue while managing costs associated with compute-intensive model training.
Sovereign wealth funds, such as GIC, also play a strategic role in shaping the AI ecosystem. Singapore’s investment reflects the city-state’s ambition to cement its position as a global hub for artificial intelligence, leveraging both capital and policy to attract leading technology firms. Coatue’s participation further illustrates U.S. investor enthusiasm for high-value AI ventures, particularly those with proven technology and enterprise-ready offerings.
The round comes amid a broader surge of capital flowing into the AI sector, which analysts warn is reaching levels reminiscent of historic technology bubbles. While some startups like Google and Meta can rely on profits from existing businesses to fund AI research, companies such as OpenAI and, potentially, Anthropic operate with little revenue relative to cash burn.
OpenAI’s projected cash exhaustion within 18 months, according to analysts, exemplifies the high-risk nature of these investments. Yet, investors continue to back AI, betting that the first firms to dominate foundational models could capture enormous future value, making early losses tolerable.
With this new round, Anthropic is poised to solidify its position as one of the preeminent AI developers globally. The company’s Claude models compete directly with OpenAI’s offerings and are increasingly finding traction with enterprise clients seeking AI solutions optimized for productivity, compliance, and security. Yet the massive influx of capital also raises questions about market sustainability, given that valuations now outpace demonstrable revenue and ROI.
The funding round is likely to reshape the competitive landscape for AI, determining which startups have the resources to scale globally and which may fall behind. The bets are both enormous and speculative for investors: a successful deployment of Claude could cement Anthropic as a dominant player in AI, while failure could echo the fate of prior overhyped tech ventures.
Even so, the continued flow of capital into companies like Anthropic and OpenAI reflects the enduring belief among investors that artificial intelligence represents the next frontier of technological disruption, with potential returns that justify even extreme risk-taking today.