NextFin News - Anthropic has officially overtaken OpenAI as the world’s most valuable startup, signaling a dramatic shift in the artificial intelligence hierarchy as both companies prepare for public market debuts. On Monday, Anthropic filed confidentially for an initial public offering on the U.S. stock market, a move that pre-empts a similar expected filing from its primary rival. The filing follows a massive $65 billion funding round that valued Anthropic at $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation and marking a nearly 150% increase from its $380 billion valuation in February.
The reversal of fortune for OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, comes as Anthropic’s specialized tools gain superior traction among enterprise clients. While OpenAI’s Codex has struggled to dominate the developer market, Anthropic’s Claude Code has seen "mind-blowing" revenue growth, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. This commercial momentum is expected to propel Anthropic to its first profitable quarter this month. The company’s cybersecurity bot, Claude Mythos, further solidified this lead in April by outperforming OpenAI’s subsequent releases in identifying software vulnerabilities, leaving the former industry leader looking like an "also-ran" in critical technical segments.
Blake Montgomery, U.S. tech editor at the Guardian, suggests that the loss of first-mover advantage could significantly dampen investor appetite for OpenAI. Montgomery, who has closely tracked the Silicon Valley power struggle, notes that if OpenAI continues to lose ground, CEO Sam Altman risks becoming a secondary figure to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. However, this perspective remains a specific competitive assessment rather than a broader market consensus. Some analysts argue that OpenAI’s massive existing user base and brand recognition still provide a formidable moat that valuation figures alone do not capture.
The rivalry is also playing out on the global stage of ethics and public perception. Last week, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah appeared alongside Pope Leo at the Vatican during the release of the pontiff’s encyclical on AI ethics, "Magnifica Humanitas." The alliance serves as a strategic branding exercise for Anthropic, positioning it as the "safety-first" alternative to OpenAI’s more aggressive development pace. Critics, including Timnit Gebru of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, have dismissed the move as "Vatican-washing," arguing that the partnership masks the inherent labor and environmental costs of large-scale AI deployment.
The financial stakes of this leadership swap extend to the broader U.S. economy, as the combined market debuts of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are projected to add at least $3 trillion to the stock market this year. While Anthropic currently holds the valuation lead and the momentum of profitability, the sustainability of this surge depends on its ability to maintain its technical edge in coding and security. Any delay in its IPO timeline or a breakthrough in OpenAI’s next-generation models could quickly recalibrate the current rankings in an industry where dominance is increasingly measured in weeks rather than years.
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