Anthropic Funding Pushed Startup Investment To Near-Record Levels In May As Exit Market Reopened
Global venture funding reached $92 billion in May, the second-largest monthly total on record behind February, according to Crunchbase News. Anthropic’s $50 billion raise represented 54% of that amount. Startup funding increased 284% from $24 billion in the year-earlier period.
Largest Rounds and Valuations
Anthropic attained a $965 billion valuation, placing it second among private companies behind SpaceX at $1.25 trillion. The company had been valued at $380 billion in February. The Crunchbase Unicorn Board listed 1,780 companies valued at $9.9 trillion at the end of May.
Ten companies raised an additional $17 billion in rounds of $500 million or larger. Anduril Industries secured $5 billion, StepFun and Moonshot AI each raised more than $2 billion, Cognition raised $1 billion, and Sierra raised $950 million.
AI Sector Share
Funding to the AI sector totaled $72 billion, or 79% of May’s overall venture capital, according to Crunchbase News.
IPO Developments
Cerebras Systems completed an IPO at $185 per share, opened at $350, and traded around $225 as of June 2, producing a valuation just over $49 billion. SpaceX filed a prospectus for an $80 billion IPO after raising $9.4 billion in equity to date. Anthropic filed confidential IPO paperwork on June 1 after raising $125 billion in equity, compared with OpenAI’s roughly $180 billion in private funding, according to Crunchbase News.
