A New AI Leader is Emerging

For three years, OpenAI set the pace in artificial intelligence. ChatGPT made it a household name, and Sam Altman became the face of the technology.

That position no longer looks secure.

This week, Anthropic raised US$65 billion at a valuation of US$965 billion. The maker of the Claude AI is now the world’s most valuable AI startup.

Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI staff, but it’s now eclipsing them. Its valuation has almost tripled since February, when it was worth US$380 billion.

The raise pushed it past OpenAI, last valued at around US$850 billion in March. Run-rate revenue (Annual revenue performance at current levels) has crossed US$47 billion.

On the same day, Anthropic shipped a new flagship model, only weeks after its last one. That cadence shows how quickly it is now using its own AI to improve workflows.

Despite frequently testing many other models, their Claude models are my workhorse that I keep returning to. It seems many other businesses feel the same.

Source: Anthropic

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Much of Anthropic’s growth is driven by large business customers. This runs counter to OpenAI’s strategy of focusing on the individual user. In my opinion, this has paid dividends.

While OpenAI has always claimed the limelight, fame, and user base, it has cost them time and focus.

OpenAI’s costs have blown out as it serves its huge, free-tier user base. That has meant their most recent updates have focused more on reigning in costs than advancing AI.

Similarly, their fame has meant that OpenAI’s head, Sam Altman, has been distracted from the core business as he’s pulled in ten different directions.

Meanwhile, Anthropic has powered ahead with expensive, powerful AI that is taking market share. Enterprises are opening their chequebooks to buy both its services and support its raises.

The money behind the latest round of capital was just as telling. Venture Capital titan Sequoia led it, with Amazon, Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix all taking part.

The Cracks at OpenAI

Anthropic’s rise has meant growing doubts about its larger rival and its leader, Sam Altman.

OpenAI missed its own user and revenue targets. It had aimed to reach 1 billion weekly ChatGPT users by the end of 2025, a goal it’s yet to claim.

Users and workers are defecting to the many rising rivals, and rumours are swirling that the company’s finance chief is concerned about funding future computing contracts. The only outside word we have is that directors have been re-examining its data centre plans.

Altman has called any talk of pulling back on computing power ridiculous. Even so, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude keep gaining ground.

Why This Reaches the ASX

The order at the top of this industry is now an open question. Anthropic doubled its worth in a quarter, while OpenAI’s lead has faded in a matter of months.

The contest is now about chips, cloud capacity and corporate contracts as much as headline model launches.

Both firms are also racing toward public listings, possibly within the year.

For Aussie investors, this is not an abstract story. In April, Anthropic signed a cooperation agreement with the Australian federal government.

It is now hunting for 300 to 500 megawatts of local data centre capacity to train Claude on Australian soil.

Bidders include Infratil’s [ASX:IFT] CDC Data Centres, NextDC [ASX:NXT] and several other private big names.

Whoever wins will land one of the largest data centre contracts the country has seen.

It seems the global AI race is now fully washing up on our shores.

Goodman Group [ASX:GMG] released a quarterly update this week, showing a total portfolio of $87.1 billion, with $18 billion under development by the end of June.

Over 70% of that development pipeline is now data centres. The capital behind this push is immense, but so are the valuations of the semiconductor stocks powering it.

Don’t Get Left Behind

Here’s the part that should unsettle you.

The order at the very top of this industry, the most scrutinised, best-funded, most obsessively covered companies on earth, just inverted in a single quarter.

Anthropic almost tripled its valuation and overtook OpenAI in the time it takes some of us to rebalance a portfolio.

If the league table can flip that fast at the top, where armies of analysts watch every move, what chance does any of us have keeping pace with the 2,000-odd names on the ASX?

That’s the real shift, and it has nothing to do with who wins the AI race. The edge has stopped being about reading more or faster.

There’s simply too much, moving too quickly, repriced by algorithms before you’ve finished your morning coffee. By the time you open your broker app, the move has already happened.

The advantage now belongs to whoever can see where capital is turning before the crowd does. No human reading headlines one at a time can do that anymore.

So we built something that can find those capital flows early. It’s called ATLAS.

ATLAS is an AI tool built specifically for the ASX. It scans roughly 1,500 stocks a day, processing the market as it moves and constantly recalibrating what actually matters.

It won’t tell you who wins the model wars. It will tell you where the money is flowing next, on our market, while there’s still time to do something about it.

In a market where the news moves faster than you, ATLAS is how we make sure our readers aren’t the ones left behind.

If you want to see how it works and become a Founding Member with an insane offer attached to it, now’s your last chance. It expires tonight: Go here.