Sequoia Capital is set to join a new mega-round for Anthropic, the Claude AI maker, according to the Financial Times — a move that punctures one of venture capital’s longest-standing taboos on backing direct rivals in the same category. The firm already holds stakes in OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI, and now appears poised to add Anthropic to the portfolio, signaling a pragmatic shift in how top-tier investors navigate the AI arms race.
The reported round underscores the scale of capital flowing into frontier models. FT says Singapore’s GIC and Coatue are each committing about $1.5 billion, while Microsoft and Nvidia have together pledged up to $15 billion, with other investors expected to contribute more than $10 billion. Anthropic is targeting $25 billion or more at a valuation near $350 billion — more than double the roughly $170 billion mark reported just four months ago by other outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.
Anthropic’s acceleration reflects intense demand for large-scale AI systems and the infrastructure required to train and serve them. The company’s Claude models have grown into a leading alternative to OpenAI’s GPT family and xAI’s Grok, particularly among enterprises seeking strong safety tooling and controllability.
Why This Move Breaks With Venture Capital Orthodoxy
For decades, elite venture firms largely lived by a one-bet-per-category rule to avoid conflicts of interest and messy governance entanglements. Sequoia itself once exemplified that posture: in 2020 it voluntarily exited its investment in payments startup Finix, forfeiting a $21 million stake and information rights after concluding the company competed with Stripe, a crown jewel in the firm’s portfolio.
Backing multiple frontier-model developers is a stark departure from that approach. Some in Silicon Valley viewed Sequoia’s 2023 bet on xAI as more of a strategic deepening of long-running ties to Musk — spanning SpaceX, Neuralink, and the platform now known as X — than a pure head-to-head pick against OpenAI. Committing to Anthropic, a core OpenAI rival in both research and commercial markets, makes the competitive overlap impossible to ignore.
The legal and information-rights angle looms large here. In court testimony last year related to litigation involving OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman said investors with access to OpenAI’s confidential information would lose that access if they made non-passive investments in direct competitors — an “industry standard” safeguard to prevent misuse of sensitive data. If Sequoia proceeds with Anthropic, observers will watch closely to see how information firewalls, board roles, and observer rights are structured across these competing holdings.
The AI Arms Race Is Rewriting Capital Rules
The sums at stake explain the shift. Training state-of-the-art models demands vast compute, scarce chips, and world-class research talent, pushing capital needs into tens of billions. That financing burden is increasingly shouldered by a mix of hyperscalers, chipmakers, sovereign wealth funds like GIC, and crossover investors such as Coatue, blurring the traditional lines between strategic and financial backers.
Reportedly preparing for an IPO that could arrive as soon as this year, Anthropic is racing to cement distribution and scale ahead of a market that is consolidating around a few platform leaders. The targeted $350 billion valuation, if achieved, would put Anthropic among the most richly valued private companies ever and further normalize multi-betting behavior among marquee VCs seeking exposure to the entire frontier-model stack.
For limited partners, the trade-off is clear: diversified access to the category’s upside versus heightened conflict-management complexity. Expect more conflicts committees, stricter information barriers, and narrower governance rights as firms pursue “all of the above” exposure across OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI — each of which is racing to define safety standards, enterprise features, and developer ecosystems.
What To Watch Next As Sequoia Weighs Anthropic Stake
Terms and governance will tell the story. Will Sequoia accept reduced information rights at OpenAI or limit its participation in sensitive committees to clear the way for an Anthropic stake? Will it take a board or observer seat at Anthropic, or opt for a cleaner, less entangled minority position?
Commercial traction will be the other scoreboard. Claude’s pace of enterprise adoption, OpenAI’s product cadence, and xAI’s ability to convert Musk’s distribution into revenue will shape how defensible these cross-portfolio bets look in hindsight. If this round closes anywhere near the reported targets, it will rank among the largest private financings on record — and it may cement a new norm in venture capital where owning multiple rivals is not a scandal but a strategy.
