In a matter of weeks, Anthropic has secured a blockbuster compute deal with SpaceX, doubled rate limits for Claude Code users, and is reportedly closing in on a $50 billion fundraise that would crown it the world’s most valuable AI start-up.
The $900 Billion Valuation Round
A Historic Leap in Three Months
Just three months after closing a record-setting $30 billion round, Anthropic — the developer of the Claude AI model — is already back at the negotiating table. Reports from Bloomberg and The New York Times indicate the company is in early talks to raise another $30 billion to $50 billion at a staggering pre-money valuation of over $900 billion.
If successful, this would not only be the largest private fundraise in history, but would also see Anthropic surpass its chief rival, OpenAI — valued at $852 billion in March — to become the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence start-up.
The round is expected to be co-led by Dragoneer, GreenOak’s, Sequoia Capital, and Altimeter Capital, according to the Financial Times. The proposed valuation represents a roughly 2.5× increase from its $380 billion post-money valuation in February — a leap that has the tech world buzzing.
Investor Frenzy
Anthropic is asking investors to submit allocations within 48 hours, and the round — expected to close within two weeks — is estimated at roughly $50 billion. Given the soaring demand, the final valuation may well exceed $900 billion.
Investor interest has reached a feverish pitch, with Anthropic receiving multiple preemptive offers at valuations in the $850 billion to $900 billion range from half a dozen sources. Anthropic is finding it difficult to resist pressure to secure more funding in what could be its final round of private fundraising before a potential IPO.
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“Anthropic is finding it difficult to resist the pressure to secure more funding — in what could be its final round of private fundraising before a potential IPO.”
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The Revenue Engine Driving the Valuation
The company’s momentum has been compounding rapidly, especially since the release of its popular AI coding assistant, Claude Code. Anthropic said earlier this month that it has reached $30 billion in annualized revenue, up from roughly $10 billion last year.
The Financial Times reported that Anthropic’s annualized revenue rose from approximately $9 billion to a projected $45 billion figure — helping fuel the intense investor interest driving this round.
The Compute Infrastructure Behind It All
Anthropic struck a landmark deal with Amazon largely centered around AI infrastructure — Amazon agreed to invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic, while Anthropic secured up to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity for training and deploying its Claude AI models.
Anthropic also secured 5 gigawatts of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom. Meanwhile, Google has said it plans to invest up to $40 billion in the company.
The Financial Reality: Spending as Fast as It Earns
Anthropic is projected to spend approximately $190 billion in 2026 on training and inference computing — an amount nearly equal to its entire annual revenue. Due to inference costs running 23% higher than expected, the company’s gross margin is compressed to around 40%, far below that of mature software companies. Anthropic is currently unprofitable and does not expect to break even until 2028.
⚠ Financial Model Watch
This creates a unique “valuation-to-compute” cycle: raise capital at a high valuation → lock in compute → use that compute to drive revenue → justify an even higher valuation. The $30 billion in new funding is largely earmarked to fulfil commitments for data centre capacity and chips.
IPO on the Horizon — With a Catch
The capital push comes as the San Francisco-based company explores a potential initial public offering as early as October 2026. Raising significant funds now is viewed as essential for securing the massive computing power required to sustain its growth trajectory.
However, investment bankers privately estimate the company’s public market valuation could land between $400 billion and $500 billion when it goes public — meaning investors buying in at a $900 billion private valuation could see an immediate paper loss before they can even trade their shares.
Some early backers — particularly those who invested in 2024 or earlier — are skipping this round entirely. Instead, these investors are waiting to potentially cash out during Anthropic’s anticipated IPO.
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Claude Code Rate Limits Doubled — The SpaceX Deal Explained
What Changed on May 6, 2026
On May 6, 2026, Anthropic doubled Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits and removed peak-hour throttling — the same day it confirmed an exclusive deal for the full computing capacity of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data centre. The changes affect Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise subscribers; the free plan was not upgraded. API users on Claude Opus models also received a 1,500% jump in Tier 1 input tokens per minute.
Specifically, three things changed simultaneously:
01
Claude Code five-hour rate limits doubled for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans.
02
Peak-hour throttling removed entirely for Pro and Max accounts.
03
API rate limits for Opus models raised substantially — 1,500% for Tier 1 input tokens per minute.
Why Peak-Hour Removal Matters More Than It Sounds
The peak-hour throttling removal is underrated. Throttling during peak hours was a quiet frustration for anyone doing serious work during business hours. Anthropic had been silently clipping limits during high-traffic windows. That clip is now gone for the two tiers most likely to feel it — and for professional developers, this is where the real friction lived.
The SpaceX Colossus 1 Deal
On May 6, 2026, Anthropic announced an agreement to use the entire compute capacity of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data centre in Memphis, Tennessee — more than 300 megawatts and over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, coming online within the month. Anthropic and SpaceX also expressed mutual interest in developing multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity over time.
Notable Detail
Elon Musk merged xAI into SpaceX earlier this year, and Musk has publicly criticised Anthropic on multiple occasions. The fact that SpaceX is now renting its flagship data centre to a company Musk has called “doomed to become the opposite of its name” says a lot about how compute economics work in 2026. Revenue wins over rivalry.
The Bigger Compute Picture
SpaceX is only one part of Anthropic’s recent compute expansion.The company’s full infrastructure pipeline now includes:
Up to 5GW with Amazon, including nearly 1GW of new capacity planned to come online by end of 2026. 5GW with Google and Broadcom, expected to come online starting in 2027. A strategic partnership with Microsoft and NVIDIA, including $30 billion of Azure capacity A $50 billion U.S. AI infrastructure investment with Fluidstack
Then Came May 13: Weekly Limits Up 50% Too
On May 13, 2026 — just one week later — Anthropic raised Claude Code weekly limits by 50%, now through July 13, for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users. This marked Anthropic’s third consecutive intervention on delivered capacity in five weeks, with competitive pressure from OpenAI’s Codex widely cited as the catalyst.
What Doesn’t Change
Anthropic doubled the five-hour rate limits and removed the peak-hour limit reduction — but said nothing about weekly caps in the May 6 announcement. What this did, in effect, was unblock your weekly cap during the hours you actually want to use it — which for most users was where the real friction lived.
The Big Picture
Together, these two stories tell one consistent narrative: Anthropic is executing an aggressive, capital-intensive strategy to simultaneously dominate the AI model market and the AI developer tooling market.
The SpaceX compute deal translates directly into better rate limits for Claude Code users — showing that the “valuation-to-compute-to-product” loop is actually delivering. For developers, that means more tokens, fewer throttle interruptions, and a platform that is visibly investing in capacity rather than rationing it.
For investors, the calculus is trickier. A $900 billion private valuation with a likely $400–500 billion IPO price suggests the premium for private access is steep. For Anthropic, the runway is getting longer — but the margin for error is shrinking.
