Both Anthropic and OpenAI can be multi-trillion-dollar winners over time, says Altimeter's Yang

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]today. And joining us now in a CNBC exclusive is Pauline Yang, partner at Altimeter Capital, who led this round.

[00:00:06]Pauline, thank you so much for joining us today. You know, it's it's crazy that only in February of this year Anthropic was valued in a round at $380 billion, and now we're almost at a trillion. How did that happen?

[00:00:19]>> Yeah, it's First of all, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me, Sara. It's it's a big headline number, but I think what's missing is kind of if you look at the revenue growth that has happened from the beginning of the year till today. When the $380 billion round happened, which we were also a part of, the company was sitting around 9 billion of run rate revenue. If you look at the same valuation today at 965, the company announced that they were at 47 billion of run rate revenue. So actually, the revenue multiple for this round is actually cheaper than the last round sitting around 20x. And so while it's a big headline number, we think that the growth certainly justifies the valuation.

[00:00:59]>> Why did the company do a fundraising round right now as it's reportedly on the brink of an IPO?

[00:01:07]>> Yeah, I think certainly, you know, the investors we were clamoring to put money in, and I think that while, you know, the rumored IPO timeline is in October, I think certainly investors would would tell the company that if you can raise, go raise. And while, you know, the company I think there's a lot of operating leverage in the company that the company is seeing, certainly more cash and a stronger balance sheet never hurts.

[00:01:35]>> Right. I guess I if you can get it, they and they plenty have plenty of demand. That's what's driving it.

[00:01:40]Pauline, you guys also have a stake, I believe, in OpenAI, right? This is the biggest now in Anthropic, but if this raises the stakes in the battle between the two with with Anthropic now getting a bigger valuation, how do you see that competition playing out, and can both be winners?

[00:01:55]>> First and foremost, we think this is the largest TAM and market that we've ever seen in multiple generations. And so certainly we absolutely believe that there can be multiple winners. If you look at the it's super cycles over the last few years, the internet, the mobile, now AI infra, those have each generated a $5 company. So we absolutely believe that both Anthropic and OpenAI can be multi-trillion dollar winners over the course of time.

[00:02:23]>> Uh one though has clearly outpaced the other one when it comes to revenue growth over let's call it the last 6 months though, Helene, and that would be Anthropic. Perhaps not seeing the focus on the enterprise, they seem to be rewarded for that. Do you anticipate that that revenue growth will continue to outpace that of OpenAI over time?

[00:02:41]>> I think that both companies are certainly now, you know, uh targeting the enterprise. Certainly that enterprises are willing to pay for frontier models that Anthropic and OpenAI are offering. And so we think that both of these can continue to grow very nicely. But certainly in the first 5 months of the year Anthropic has executed with their product velocity.

[00:03:02]And so we've seen that growth, but we don't count OpenAI or Google or SpaceX out either.