Anthropic is beginning to provide hard evidence of its dominance in the corporate sector. The company’s latest funding round, in which it raised $30 billion, has pushed its valuation to a not inconsiderable $380 billion. While this amount is still behind the projected capitalisation of OpenAI, the growth rate of the Claude manufacturer suggests that the battle for supremacy in the AI ecosystem is entering a new, more mature phase.
Investors, which include giants such as D. E. Shaw Ventures, ICONIQ and Nvidia, are no longer just buying into the vision of secure artificial intelligence. Their optimism is fuelled by a specific product: Claude Code. This tool, dedicated to developers, has become the company’s revenue workhorse, reaching a run-rate of $2.5 billion. The fact that business subscriptions have quadrupled since the beginning of the year, with the enterprise sector already generating more than half of the segment’s revenue, is testament to the successful monetisation of a technology that is still only an operating expense for many competitors.
However, it is not just coding that is causing excitement in the financial markets. The introduction of the Claude Cowork AI agent has caused a shake-up in the SaaS software sector. The ability to delegate complex computing tasks directly to an AI model has caused investors to question the future of traditional office support tools. If an AI agent can manage processes on its own, the value of many existing software platforms comes into question.
Anthropic also stands out from the industry with an unusual political strategy. In an era of widespread lobbying for deregulation, the company has committed $20 million to support politicians advocating for AI oversight. This pragmatic approach to ethics may prove to be a key asset in building trust among corporate and institutional clients, who are increasingly concerned about the legal and reputational implications of implementing algorithmic black boxes.
The company’s current revenue of $14 billion and the growing involvement of players such as Blackstone confirm that Anthropic is no longer just a ‘safer alternative’ to ChatGPT. It has become the foundation of a new business infrastructure that, instead of being massively popular, builds its value on deep integration into the daily work of engineers and executives. In this arms race, the winner is not who has the most users, but whose tools become indispensable to the functioning of the modern economy.
