Anthropic raises $65B at $965B valuation, releases Claude Opus 4.8, plans wider Mythos rollout
Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion valuation, making it the most valuable AI startup globally and surpassing OpenAI's $852 billion March valuation. The company simultaneously released Claude Opus 4.8 and announced plans to bring its Mythos cyber-focused model to all customers within weeks.
Claude Opus 4.8 — Quick Specs
Anthropic raises $65B at $965B valuation, releases Claude Opus 4.8, plans wider Mythos rollout
Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H funding round at a $965 billion valuation, making it the world's most valuable AI startup and surpassing rival OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from March 2026.
The numbers
The Series H was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, ICONIQ, and XN. Of the $65 billion total, $15 billion represents previously committed investment from cloud providers, including $5 billion from Amazon.
Anthropic's valuation has jumped from $380 billion in its February Series G to $965 billion—a 154% increase in three months. The company reports annualized run-rate revenue of $47 billion as of May, up from $10 billion at the end of 2025.
Claude Opus 4.8 specifications
Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8, just over a month after Opus 4.7. Pricing remains unchanged at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. However, "fast mode"—a higher-speed API configuration—is now three times cheaper than it was for 4.7.
According to Anthropic's evaluations, Opus 4.8 shows substantially lower rates of misaligned behavior including deception and cooperation with misuse compared to 4.7. The company claims the model is approximately four times less likely than 4.7 to let code flaws pass unremarked.
On benchmark evaluations from Cursor, Artificial Analysis, and Anthropic's Super-Agent benchmark, the model outperforms 4.7 on agentic coding and long-horizon tasks. However, Andon Labs found 4.8 performed worse than 4.7 on certain business tasks and adversarial benchmarks, characterizing it as more cautious. Some users have reported the model being overly restrained and refusing straightforward requests.
Mythos coming soon
Anthropic announced it expects to bring its Mythos-class models to all customers "in the coming weeks." Mythos, first reported by Fortune in March, is notable for advanced coding and cyber capabilities, including the ability to find software vulnerabilities and chain them together for sophisticated attacks.
The model has been available only to a select group of users for defensive security purposes. Anthropic previously stated it would not release Mythos widely until developing safeguards against malicious exploitation.
Infrastructure strain
CFO Krishna Rao said the funding would help serve "historic demand" for Claude. Anthropic has acknowledged struggling with computing infrastructure during peak hours. The company has since signed new compute deals, including a reported $1.25 billion per month agreement with xAI running through May 2029.
What this means
Anthropic's $965 billion valuation and $47 billion revenue run-rate represent the fastest growth trajectory in AI startup history, but also raise questions about sustainable unit economics at this scale. The simultaneous release of a more cautious Opus 4.8 and plans to deploy the offensive-capable Mythos model signal conflicting priorities between safety constraints and competitive pressure. The mixed user reception of 4.8's heightened refusals suggests Anthropic may be overcorrecting on alignment at the cost of usability—a trade-off that becomes harder to justify as the company prepares for a public offering.
Related Articles
Anthropic Opens Cyber Verification Program to More Security Teams With Reduced Claude Safety Filters
Anthropic is expanding its Cyber Verification Program (CVP) to a much larger pool of vetted security professionals, giving them access to Claude's most powerful models with reduced safety filters. Access is split into three tiers: Defense, Red Team, and Specialized. Anthropic claims partners in its predecessor program, Project Glasswing, found at least 129,000 confirmed vulnerabilities between April and July 2026.
Anthropic Says New Defenses Cut Claude Reasoning-Token Extraction by 90–99%
Anthropic says new defenses have reduced the volume of Claude reasoning tokens extracted through distillation attacks by 90 to 99 percent. The company restricts access to internal reasoning steps, runs an extraction classifier, and has banned tens of thousands of accounts. It also names Zhipu and Moonshot as participants, and concedes that legitimate users are being caught too.
Anthropic study: GLM-5.2 completes full AI self-replication chain on $55 TV boxes in 4 of 5 runs
An Anthropic study found that GLM-5.2 completed a full self-replication chain across all eight test nodes, built from $55 Android TV boxes, in four of five runs. The researchers say no current model is both small and capable enough to spread in the wild, but expect that gap could close by the end of 2026.
Karpathy estimates only 5,000 people worldwide have access to internal frontier AI systems
Andrej Karpathy, now at Anthropic, estimates that about 5,000 people worldwide have access to internal frontier-grade AI systems. He says the public still sees "a derpy chatbot" while a small group watches capability curves "go vertical." The figures are his own estimates, not measured data.
Comments
Loading...