The AI battle in Silicon Valley has reached a historic turning point.

Recently, the American AI startup Anthropic is about to complete a massive funding round exceeding $30 billion. This funding will directly push its post-investment valuation above $900 billion, surpassing its longtime rival OpenAI (currently valued at about $852 billion), officially crowning it as the world's most expensive AI unicorn.

Previously, everyone was watching OpenAI and ChatGPT's reactions, but now the trend has shifted. Anthropic not only earned a higher valuation than OpenAI, but its growth rate was truly "terrifying." For the capital market, this marks a complete reshaping of the AI industry's valuation system.

| Explosive Performance: A "Light-Speed" Leap from 4 Billion to 50 Billion

Why is the market willing to offer Anthropic such a sky-high valuation? The answer is simple: real cash performance is too strong.

Revenue Explosion: The company expects second-quarter revenue to reach $10.9 billion, doubling quarter-on-quarter. Even more impressive, its annualized operating rate (ARR) soared from $4 billion last July to an expected surpass $50 billion next month. In less than a year, the number increased more than tenfold.

First profit: In the cash-burning AI sector, Anthropic is expected to achieve its first-ever profitable quarter in history in the second quarter of this year. In today's tech world, this is practically a "rare animal."

Victory in the Enterprise Market: Unlike OpenAI's early focus on consumer ends, Anthropic has been relentlessly targeting enterprise clients from the very beginning. Its Claude model performs exceptionally well in programming and complex reasoning, and currently 8 of the Fortune 10 companies are its clients.

| Computing Power Gamble: Suppliers Become 'Sugar Daddy'

To support this exponential business growth, Anthropic is frantically hoarding computing power. It not only signed a nearly $45 billion deal with SpaceX but also bought $1.8 billion worth of services from Akamai.

Even more interestingly, it turns the original supplier into an investor:

谷歌：承诺以3500亿美元估值投资100亿美元，如果业绩达标，未来还能再追加最多300亿美元。

亚马逊：同样以3500亿美元估值入股50亿美元，并计划追加200亿美元。

这意味着，科技巨头们正在通过“注资+供能”的方式，深度绑定这位未来的AI霸主。

竞泰观点｜跟着“卖铲人”走，警惕二级市场溢价

Facing a super unicorn with tens of billions of dollars in assets, how should ordinary investors or institutional investors participate in this grand feast?

Focus on "shovel sellers," not blindly chase "gold miners":

The biggest certainty beneficiaries of the arms race between Anthropic and OpenAI are actually upstream infrastructure providers.

Whether it's core chip giants like Nvidia or computing power and cloud service providers like SpaceX, Google Cloud, and Amazon AWS, all will continue to benefit from this "money-devouring" level of infrastructure investment. In the secondary market, these targets deliver far better results than AI application layer companies still burning cash.

Focus on the "small but beautiful" vertical domain, and avoid the "battle of gods" involving general large models:

Anthropic's success demonstrates the tremendous value of verticals such as enterprise-level code generation and cybersecurity.

Rather than squeezing into the crowded and expensive general large model track, it is better to focus on AI application software vendors deeply engaged in high-value industries such as finance, healthcare, and law, with genuine paying customers and clear business closed loops. They often have stronger risk resistance and more stable cash flow.

Stay calm about post-IPO valuations, beware of "all the good news is coming out":

As these two giants rush toward IPOs (expected as early as this fall), the high valuations in the primary market will have a huge siphoning effect on the secondary market.

But historical experience tells us that when a company is overhyped before going public and its valuation overdraws on future years' performance, it often faces significant pullback pressure after listing. Therefore, even if you are optimistic about the long-term prospects of the AI sector, it is not recommended to blindly chase high prices in the early stages of an IPO; patiently waiting for valuations to return to a rational range may be a wiser choice.

A $900 billion valuation is both a dazzling crown and a heavy shackle. Anthropic's comeback will greatly boost sentiment in the global AI sector; But in the long run, when AI shifts from "storytelling" to "competing on performance," only those companies that can truly help companies reduce costs and increase efficiency while making money themselves can be the last to laugh in this brutal elimination race.