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May 29, 2026
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TGIF! Anthropic raises $65 billion at a valuation of $900 billion and also announces its new flagship AI model, Claude Opus 4.8. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explodes during a test, in a serious setback for Jeff Bezos' space company.
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Anthropic said Thursday it had raised $65 billion at a valuation of $900 billion before the financing, more than double the valuation in a round closed three months earlier. New investors Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix, which make a key component of AI chips, are investing in the model maker. The capital raise brings Anthropic’s total fundraising to more than $130 billion, according to the person, and follows a whirlwind process stoked by Anthropic’s fast-growing revenue, which the company said passed $47 billion earlier this month, up from $9 billion at the end of last year. Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia led the round. Additional investors Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, Singapore’s GIC, Iconiq and hedge fund XN co-led the round. Many of these investors also have invested in OpenAI. The fundraise includes $15 billion commitments previously pledged by Amazon and other hyperscalers, Anthropic said. The maker of Claude has been rapidly adding access to AI servers in deals with Amazon, Google and SpaceX that will cost tens of billions of dollars. “This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing,” said CFO Krishna Rao in a statement.
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Anthropic on Thursday announced its new flagship AI model, Claude Opus 4.8, which showed improvements in standardized AI performance evaluations in coding, financial analysis and other fields. The company also said the model is more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims. Claude Opus 4.8 will cost the same as the prior flagship model, Opus 4.7. Additionally, Claude Opus 4.8’s “fast mode,” which can work 2.5 times faster than the regular version, is three times cheaper than the fast version of previous Anthropic models, the company said. The emphasis on cost comes as many Anthropic customers are facing effective price hikes for the models they use and Anthropic has projected turning a profit in the current quarter. Anthropic also announced other new features for its coding agent Claude Code and the ability for customers to choose how hard the Claude chatbot should “think” about their queries. The model announcement came at the same time Anthropic announced a $65 capital raise led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks Capital and Sequoia Capital at a $965 billion valuation, including the investment. OpenAI was recently valued at about $850 billion, including roughly $120 billion in new capital commitments.
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Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin suffered a serious setback Thursday evening when its New Glenn rocket exploded on a launch pad in Florida during a test. Video clips of the incident show a giant fireball engulfing the rocket and surrounding structures. No one was on board the rocket or appeared to be injured during the “hotfire test”—during which the engines on a rocket are typically fired up while the rocket remains bolted to the ground. “We experienced an anomaly during today’s hotfire test,” a post on Blue Origin’s X account said. “All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more.” New Glenn is a critical part of Blue Origin’s effort to turn itself into a credible competitor to Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. The rocket is set to play a key role in Blue Origin’s participation in NASA’s Artemis moon missions, alongside SpaceX and others. While Blue Origin has built more than one New Glenn rocket, the possible destruction of its Florida launch pad could hamper its ability to launch more rockets. Following the explosion, veteran space journalist Eric Berger wrote on X: “This completely takes Blue Origin out of the Artemis picture for the next 12 months, most likely. All of those Moon Base missions, man, it’s bad.” Bezos in his own post on X acknowledged the severity of the problem: “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
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On Wednesday, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill that will require major AI companies to submit their model safety plans for third-party audits, as well as creating whistleblower protections for those companies’ employees. While Governor JB Pritzker still has to sign the bill into law, he posted his approval on X soon after the vote, writing that “Illinois is leading the nation in holding Big Tech accountable.” Both OpenAI and Anthropic publicly supported the bill, though some trade groups, including the Chamber of Progress, opposed it on the grounds that its auditing system is untested. “No credible or standardized ecosystem currently exists to conduct the type of independent audits envisioned under the legislation,” the Computer & Communications Industry Association wrote in a letter to Illinois lawmakers last week. Illinois joins New York and California, which passed their own AI safety bills last year, deepening a fissure with the federal government. Congress continues to deliberate on its own legislation that would pre-empt such bills. President Donald Trump has expressed a desire to block any state-level AI regulation.
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Customer demand for AI is pouring jet fuel on Dell’s server, storage and networking businesses, as its overall revenue grew 88% to $43.8 billion during its April quarter compared to last year, beating its earlier forecast by more than $8 billion. Excluding items, Dell reported earnings per share of $4.86, compared to its earlier forecast of $2.90 per share. Dell raised its full-year projection to 50% growth, from the 23% it issued a few months ago, and its shares jumped more than 38% after its earnings report. Sales of AI servers, or ones equipped with GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, were $16.1 billion, up 757% from last year and nearly 80% from last quarter. On an earnings call, Dell COO Jeff Clarke said the AI server sales growth stems from customers doing more AI-related work, like developing agents. S | | | |
