What’s rarer than a unicorn? Anthropic didn’t just join the Series H club, it almost became the first $1 trillion private company ever

Two weeks ago, defense startup Anduril raised a Series H round—$5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, shocking the defense world as the largest defense-tech round in history.

On Thursday, Anthropic had its own Series H, but one from a different planet.

In venture capital-speak, a “unicorn” is a private company valued at $1 billion and above. The decacorn and hectocorn are valued about $10 billion and $100 billion, respectively. So what do you call a trillion-dollar private company? That’s the question Anthropic flirted with on Thursday while announcing a rarely seen Series H funding round. 

The AI startup raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, eclipsing its rival OpenAI in the race to own the technology of the century. Its value is roughly the GDP of Switzerland, more than the combined market cap of every U.S. airline, or more than the entire U.S. defense budget. 

Series H rounds are so rare that most of the companies that have raised them are recognizable names: Facebook, Lyft, Discord, Slack.  

Databricks just hit a $134 billion valuation in February after grinding through Series I, J, and K in roughly two-and-a-half years. Stripe made it to Series I in 2023, but only to raise $6.5 billion the company said it didn’t need—the round existed so employees could cash out and pay their tax b...