Anthropic is targeting a valuation of roughly $900 billion in a new funding round, with sources telling TechCrunch the deal could close within two weeks — investors have been given a tight 48-hour window to submit capital allocations.

The round would more than double Anthropic's February valuation of $380 billion and would surpass rival OpenAI, which closed at an $852 billion post-money valuation earlier this year.

Anthropic has received multiple preemptive offers totaling around $50 billion; soaring investor demand means the final valuation could exceed the $900 billion target.

The capital raise is driven in part by compute needs for Claude Mythos Preview, a new advanced cybersecurity model available only to select companies, which has drawn high-profile meetings between Trump administration officials, tech CEOs, and bank executives.

Anthropic has separately secured up to $25 billion from Amazon and up to $40 billion from Google, along with gigawatt-scale compute capacity commitments from both — underpinning the company's accelerating infrastructure ambitions.

With an IPO expected within 12–18 months, the company is entering a phase where investors will scrutinize whether it can convert $30 billion in annualized revenue into sustained, long-term profitability.

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft reported Q1 2026 earnings this week, collectively logging more than $130 billion in capital expenditures for the quarter alone — all directed at AI data centers and infrastructure.

Combined hyperscaler spending is now on track to surpass $700 billion for full-year 2026, up sharply from roughly $410 billion in 2025 and just over $200 billion in 2024 — the largest concentrated infrastructure cycle in tech history.

Amazon has projected roughly $200 billion in 2026 capex focused on AWS AI infrastructure; Alphabet doubled its guidance to $175–185 billion, and Meta raised its target to as much as $135 billion.

Investor reaction was split: Meta shares fell roughly 6% after its capex hike while Alphabet and Amazon rose on strong cloud growth — highlighting Wall Street's growing divide over whether the buildout is justified or getting ahead of itself.

For founders, the signal is structural: cloud pricing, GPU availability, and infrastructure access are all being shaped by this spending wave, and the companies that secure compute capacity earliest hold a durable competitive advantage.

The EU AI Act entered into force on August 1, 2024, and will become fully applicable on August 2, 2026 — meaning AI startups selling into Europe have only months left to reach compliance.

Prohibited AI practices and AI literacy obligations already entered into application in February 2025; the August 2026 deadline extends full obligations to high-risk AI system providers and general-purpose AI model developers.

The European Commission proposed a "Digital Omnibus" package, currently being negotiated by the European Parliament and Council, that would broaden regulatory sandbox access and clarify the AI Act's interplay with other EU laws.

The Commission's AI Office is preparing transparency guidelines for AI systems — covering scope, definitions, and transparency obligations — to be published in Q2 2026, giving builders a narrow window to adapt before full enforcement begins.

Founders with EU customers or EU-based users should treat August 2, 2026 as a hard compliance deadline: obligations around risk management documentation, conformity assessments, and human oversight requirements will be enforceable from that date forward.