Yesterday in AI: 18 May 2026 — $44B Revenue Fuels Anthropic's $900B Raise

Anthropic finalizes a $30B round at $900B+ valuation backed by $44B ARR; OpenAI launches ChatGPT personal finance with Plaid and unifies all products under Greg Brockman; Karpathy's 65-line CLAUDE.md hits 220K combined GitHub stars.

By OMC Editorial on 2026-05-19

TL;DR — Anthropic is finalizing a $30B funding round at $900B+ valuation driven by $44B in annualized revenue; OpenAI launched ChatGPT personal finance with Plaid and unified all products under co-founder Greg Brockman; a 65-line CLAUDE.md inspired by Andrej Karpathy reached 220,000 combined GitHub stars. --- 1️⃣ Anthropic Closes In on the $900B Crown - What: Anthropic is finalizing a $30B funding round at a $900B+ valuation, co-led by Sequoia, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Altimeter, expected to close by end of May 2026. - Why it matters: At $900B, Anthropic would become the world's most valuable AI company, overtaking OpenAI's $852B March valuation — a benchmark driven by explosive enterprise adoption. - Key number: $44B annualized revenue, up 80× year-over-year from roughly $550M in early 2025. Anthropic's revenue has compounded faster than almost any comparable technology company: from $9B ARR in early 2026 to $44B by May, powered almost entirely by enterprise. More than 1,000 customers now spend $1M+ annually, eight of the Fortune 10 are active clients, and gross margins have improved to over 70%. Part of the capital is earmarked for compute procurement — including a reported deal with SpaceX — as the company prepares for a potential IPO as early as October 2026. As of May 18, no term sheet had been signed, but investors including Sequoia and Dragoneer are reportedly committing over $2B each. If the round closes at $900B+, Anthropic would nearly triple the $380B valuation it achieved in February 2026 — and would be worth more than Coca-Cola and Netflix combined. 📎 Bloomberghttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-12/anthropic-in-talks-to-raise-30-billion-at-900-billion-valuation · TechCrunchhttps://techcrunch.com/2026/04/30/anthropic-potential-900b-valuation-round-could-happen-within-two-weeks/ · TechFundingNewshttps://techfundingnews.com/anthropic-30b-fundraise-900b-valuation-mega-round/ --- 2️⃣ OpenAI Puts Your Bank Account in ChatGPT - What: O