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AI startups’ high-velocity valuations are shooting sky-high

The race to invest in AI startups is pushing funding to new heights. Anthropic is reportedly close to a fundraising round with a $170 billion valuation, just five months after a $61.5 billion valuation.

Jon Keegan, Hyunsoo Rim

7/30/25 2:40PM

Investors are pouring billions into AI startups at a feverish pace, and valuations are shooting sky-high.

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic is closing in on a $5 billion fundraising round, with an eye-popping valuation of $170 billion. That’s a 176% increase in five short months from its $61.5 billion valuation in March.

Anthropic’s sharp rise in value comes as its sales are increasing at a brisk pace. Bloomberg reports that the startup is pulling in $5 billion in annual recurring revenue, and that the company sees that reaching $9 billion by the end of the year.

OpenAI’s valuation roughly doubled over six months from $157 billion last October to $300 billion after raising $40 billion in a round led by SoftBank.

Middle East money

As AI companies look for deep-pocketed investors to help pay to train new models and build data centers, all eyes are pointing to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East.

Wired reports that Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s cofounder and CEO, recently announced to staff that the company would pursue investments from Middle Eastern countries, despite earlier opposition.

During President Trump’s trip to the Middle East, a flurry of investments were announced, sending a clear signal that the taps were open.

Saudi Arabia’s Humain announced a deal with Nvidia to build 500 megawatts of AI data centers filled with the company’s GPUs, and OpenAI announced a partnership to build “Stargate UAE.” There were also reports that OpenAI has discussed raising money from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

And the rush to invest in AI isn’t just limited to the startups seeking to build foundational models. Companies deep in the AI ecosystem like Databricks and Scale AI are currently valued at $62 billion and $29 billion, respectively. Scale AI recently saw its CEO depart to run Meta’s “Superintelligence Lab”; it also secured a $14.3 billion investment from the company.

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Apple to let users choose between Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI models

Apple has been inching toward letting outside AI power its devices — and now it’s going further.

The company plans to let users choose between rival AI models across iOS 27, due this fall, expanding beyond ChatGPT to include players like Google and Anthropic, Bloomberg reports. The difference this time: deeper integration, with outside models powering features like Siri, writing tools, and image generation across the system.

Currently, Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, gives users the ability to query ChatGPT, but doing so requires a clunky extra step and usage has been poor. Meanwhile, Apple’s own AI tools have fallen short. (Apple has decided to use Google’s Gemini to power Siri in the future.) It’s not clear users care which AI is under the hood — as long as it works.

Apple to Let Users Choose Rival AI Models Across Its iOS 27 Features

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FactSet and S&P Global fall after Anthropic releases financial services agents

FactSet and S&P Global are trading lower after Anthropic unveiled a set of AI agents meant to automate financial services work. Both stocks also sold off earlier this year after Anthropic’s Claude introduced financial research tools.

The 10 agents handle tasks like earnings analysis, market research, financial modeling, and auditing — tasks that mirror how analysts use FactSet and S&P Global’s data and research platforms.

Agents for financial services and insurance

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Big publishers sue Meta over AI training

A group of major publishers, including Elsevier, McGraw Hill, and Hachette, sued Meta on Tuesday, alleging the company used millions of pirated books and journal articles to train its Llama models. The case escalates earlier lawsuits led by individual authors, bringing in deeper-pocketed players with more coordinated legal firepower.

Meta says AI training qualifies as fair use and plans to fight the class-action lawsuit. But the stakes are rising: a similar case against Anthropic settled for $1.5 billion last year, and courts have yet to determine a consistent standard for evaluating such claims.

Major publishers sue Meta for copyright infringement over AI training

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Alphabet to tap international bond markets again as AI spending surges

Alphabet is tapping European debt markets again as its AI spending ramps up.

The Google parent is selling at least €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in bonds across six tranches, according to Bloomberg. The filing says that it’s for “general corporate purposes,” and the timing aligns with its plans to spend up to $190 billion this year on data centers and other AI infrastructure. In a separate filing released today, Alphabet also said it’s issuing Canadian dollar-denominated bonds, colloquially referred to as a “maple bonds,” but no values were available.

These are the latest in a broader funding push as the company increases its already high capex expectations. Earlier this year, Alphabet raised about $20 billion in a heavily oversubscribed US bond sale and also tapped sterling and Swiss franc markets as part of a roughly $32 billion deal.

Alphabet Returns to Euro Debt Market for Latest AI Megabond Deal

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Tesla told European regulators it expects “EU-wide” FSD approval in second or third quarter

Weeks after Dutch regulators became the first in the EU to approve Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system, internal emails viewed by Reuters show the concerns the company still faces across the bloc. That includes regulator questions about speeding, performance on icy roads, and whether calling a system that requires constant driver attention “Full Self-Driving” is misleading.

CEO Elon Musk has blamed Tesla’s weak European sales on the lack of FSD and is betting that wider approval could help turn things around.

That rollout may take longer than hoped: while Musk had pointed to earlier approval, a presentation in the correspondence reviewed by Reuters says Tesla now expects “EU-wide” clearance in the second or third quarter of 2026.

European vehicle regulators are meeting in Brussels today to discuss the matter, but the earliest possible vote would be in July.

Exclusive: Tesla faces EU skepticism over automated-driving tech, records show