- Sequoia Capital is in talks to join Anthropics proposed $25B+ financing round led by GIC and Coatue.
- The round reportedly values Anthropic at about $350B, up from roughly $170B four months earlier.
- GIC and Coatue are said to commit about $1.5B each, with Microsoft and Nvidia up to $15B and other investors expected to add $10B+.
- Sequoias participation would mark a shift toward backing multiple leading AI rivals, alongside bets on OpenAI and xAI.
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This deal would be one of the largest private financing rounds in AI to date. Sitting at a proposed valuation of $350 billion, Anthropic is rapidly approaching unicorn status on par with or exceeding many public AI companies. The timing is logical: Anthropic has demonstrated fast revenue growth, primarily driven by enterprise adoption of Claude, Claude Code, and related tools, which are higher margin and stickier than consumer-only subscription models.
For Sequoia, entering this round despite existing investments in OpenAI and xAI (both competitors) signals a recalibration of its investment thesis. The financial upside in backing multiple frontrunners in an enormous, expanding market appears to outweigh past concerns over portfolio conflict. However, the risk exposures are higher—especially in terms of information separation clauses, regulatory attention, and potential dilution should valuation fail to scale as projected.
An important backdrop to this funding round is the revenue trajectory: from ~$1 billion in early 2025 to ~$5-7 billion by late 2025, with ambitious internal projections of $20-26 billion annualized run rate by end-2026. If achieved, those numbers would elevate Anthropic closer to the upper echelon of private AI players, likely triggering IPO discussions and valuation scrutiny from public markets.
Strategic implications extend to market structure: as leading VC firms like Sequoia break rank in backing multiple AI rivals, competitive differentiation may shift more to execution, model depth, enterprise scaling, and regulatory positioning than purely architectural or innovation lead. Future outcomes may hinge on which firms manage costs, safety/regulatory risks, data access, and international expansion most effectively.
Open questions include: what governance or information-firewall protections Sequoia must accept given its overlapping investments; whether Anthropic can deliver on its projected revenue without over-burn; whether macroeconomic or regulatory pressures (e.g., AI oversight, compute supply bottlenecks) could disrupt valuation and liquidity assumptions; and whether the IPO timeline (as early as later in 2026) remains viable under current conditions.
Supporting Notes
- Funding round led by GIC and Coatue, each contributing $1.5 billion; total target raise of at least $25 billion; Sequoia joining.
- Valuation of Anthropic in this round estimated at ~$350 billion, up from ~$170 billion just four months earlier.
- Microsoft and Nvidia together committed up to $15 billion; additional VCs and investors expected to contribute over $10 billion more.
- Historical revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August 2025; approaching $7 billion by late 2025; internal projections for 2026 at $20-26 billion.
- Anthropic passed $3 billion in annualized revenue by May 2025, up from near $1 billion in December 2024.
- Sequoia’s past policy included walking away from investments when competitors overlapped (e.g. Finix vs. Stripe), but under new leadership it is more open to overlapping stakes in leading AI players.
- Deal expected to close in the next few weeks; negotiation still ongoing on which investors will be included.
- Anthropic is reportedly preparing for an IPO possibly in 2026.