Anthropic and Cerebras: A Record-Breaking May for Startups

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Key Takeaways

1In May, Anthropic raised $50 billion, contributing to a total of $92 billion for startups.

2Cerebras Systems successfully went public, boosting interest in tech companies.

3Anthropic became the second most valuable private company, reaching $965 billion.

💡Why it matters — These massive funding rounds are redefining the startup landscape, attracting record capital and driving technological innovation.

May, a Turning Point for Startup Investments

The month of May marked a significant milestone for the startup market, with investments reaching nearly record levels. At the heart of this dynamic was the impressive $50 billion funding secured by Anthropic, which played a central role. This deal is the second largest ever recorded in the startup sector, propelling global investment to one of the highest monthly totals in history.

The successful IPO of Cerebras Systems also contributed to this trend, signaling a potential influx of liquidity into private markets. This situation could well fuel the next wave of investments in startups.

Numbers That Speak

In May, global venture capital funding reached $92 billion, marking the second-largest monthly total ever recorded, just behind February, according to data from Crunchbase. Of this amount, Anthropic raised $50 billion, representing 54% of the total funding for the month.

Startup funding thus increased by 284% compared to the previous year, rising from $24 billion, according to Crunchbase.

The Impact of Cerebras' IPO

The month was also marked by the successful IPO of Cerebras Systems, a venture-backed company. Specializing in chips for artificial intelligence inference, Cerebras went public at the upper limit of its range at $185 per share and opened at $350. As of June 2, the stock is trading around $225, valuing the company at just over $49 billion.

Anthropic, a Valuation on the Rise

In terms of valuation, Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI on the Crunchbase Unicorn Board, becoming the second most valued private company at $965 billion, just behind SpaceX at $1.25 trillion. A few months earlier, in February, Anthropic was valued at $380 billion. The board has significantly increased in value in recent months, counting a total of 1,780 companies valued at $9.9 trillion by the end of May.

Notable Fundraising

Last month, an additional $17 billion was raised by 10 companies during funding rounds of $500 million and more. Among them was the defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries, which raised $5 billion, and the China-based AI labs StepFun and Moonshot AI, each raising over $2 billion after completing rounds earlier this year. The automated coding lab Cognition raised $1 billion, and Sierra, which develops AI solutions for customer service, raised $950 million in a single round.

AI sector funding totaled $72 billion, accounting for 79% of the funding last month.

Towards New IPOs

Cerebras' IPO paves the way for other public listings, potentially including record-breaking ones. SpaceX publicly filed its prospectus in May, stating its intention to raise $80 billion through its IPO. The space tech giant has raised $9.4 billion in equity funding to date, according to Crunchbase.

Anthropic, expected to outpace OpenAI in public markets after filing its confidential IPO documents on June 1, has raised $125 billion in equity funding so far, compared to about $180 billion for its competitor.

Private markets in 2026 raised capital at an unprecedented pace, thanks to larger rounds, faster follow-on funding, and record valuations. At the same time, if SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI go public this year as they have stated, the resulting liquidity could be the largest in market history, reinjecting hundreds of billions into the hands of startup investors who will redeploy them into the next wave of private companies.