- The Shift
- Posts
- Anthropic raises $13B
Anthropic raises $13B
Plus, 🎯 OpenAI’s $1.1B Deal + New Safety Guardrails, Send Smart Emails to Leads from Google Sheets, and more!
Hello Readersđź‘€
Curious about the biggest AI moves today? You’re in the right place. In today’s edition, we have:
đź’° Anthropic Hits $183B Valuation With $13B Raise
🎯 Send Smart Emails to Leads from Google Sheets
🚨 OpenAI’s Big Week: $1.1B Deal + New Safety Guardrails
🔨Tools you cannot miss
đź’° Anthropic Hits $183B Valuation With $13B Raise
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, closed a $13B Series F round at a staggering $183B valuation, cementing itself as one of OpenAI’s fiercest rivals. The financing underscores both its rapid growth and the high-stakes race to dominate enterprise AI.
The Shift:
1. Record-Breaking Fundraise - Anthropic raised $13B in an all-equity Series F led by ICONIQ, Fidelity, and Lightspeed, joined by major players including Blackstone, BlackRock, and Qatar Investment Authority. The deal marks one of the largest private AI financings to date, coming just months after a $3.5B round at $61.5B.
2. Explosive Revenue and Customer Growth - Run-rate revenue surged from $1B at the start of 2025 to $5B by August, fueled by enterprise adoption and API usage. The company now serves over 300,000 businesses, with “large accounts” contributing over $100K each, growing nearly sevenfold in the last year.
3. Claude Code Driving Momentum -Claude Code, Anthropic’s developer-focused tool, has already generated more than $500M in run-rate revenue. Usage has skyrocketed, growing over tenfold in just three months since its full launch, establishing it as a key growth driver.
4. Strategic Priorities With New Capital - The fresh funding will be directed toward enterprise scaling, deeper safety research, and international expansion. Despite concerns over taking sovereign wealth funds’ money, CEO Dario Amodei acknowledged it’s difficult to exclude them in today’s capital-intensive AI landscape.
Anthropic’s leap from $61B to $183B in under six months highlights both investor confidence and the unsustainable pace of the AI funding race. With revenue growth on par with OpenAI, Anthropic is positioning itself not just as a competitor but as a long-term contender for dominance in enterprise AI.
🎯 Send Smart Emails to Leads from Google Sheets
You want to auto-email your leads with customized outreach using OpenAI + Gmail + Sheets, no manual writing, no CRM bloat.
⚙️ Step-by-Step Setup in n8n
Create a New Workflow
Go to n8n.io, sign in, and click “Create New Workflow”.Google Sheets Node
Search and add “Google Sheets” node.
Connect your account and set it to read rows from your lead sheet.
OpenAI Node
Add “OpenAI” node.
In the prompt, write:
“Write a friendly cold outreach email to {Name}, a {Job Title} at {Company}, introducing our product {Product Name}.”Connect it to the Google Sheets node (use expressions for variables).
Gmail Node
Add Gmail node, connect your account.
Set it to send email to with the subject and OpenAI content as the body.
Test & Activate: Run once to test. Then, schedule it daily or trigger on sheet update.
đź’ˇ Why It Works
Your email is personalized, not templated.
OpenAI handles tone + copy, so you don’t write 100s of emails.
Fully automated from your source of truth: Google Sheets.
🚨 OpenAI’s Big Week: $1.1B Deal + New Safety Guardrails
OpenAI just announced two major moves: a $1.1B acquisition of Statsig to strengthen its applications business, and new safeguards for ChatGPT after high-profile safety failures. Together, they signal both product acceleration and a stronger focus on AI responsibility.
The Shift:
1. $1.1B Statsig Acquisition and New CTO of Applications - OpenAI is acquiring Statsig in an all-stock deal under its $300B valuation. Founder Vijaye Raji will become CTO of Applications, reporting to Fidji Simo, and lead ChatGPT, Codex, and future apps. Statsig’s experimentation platform will be integrated while still serving existing customers independently.
2. Leadership Shake-Up Across Teams - Kevin Weil transitions from CPO to VP of OpenAI for Science, building an AI-powered platform for research alongside Sebastien Bubeck. Meanwhile, Srinivas Narayanan shifts to CTO of B2B Applications, aligning with COO Brad Lightcap on enterprise partnerships.
3. Routing Sensitive Chats to GPT-5 - In response to tragic misuse cases, OpenAI will begin routing high-risk conversations, like signs of self-harm, to reasoning models such as GPT-5 and o3. These models are designed to reason longer, resist adversarial prompts, and provide safer responses.
4. Parental Controls and Teen Safety Rules - Within a month, parents will gain tools to link accounts, disable memory/history, and receive alerts when acute distress is detected. Age-appropriate behavior rules will be on by default, complementing existing features like Study Mode. This rollout is part of OpenAI’s 120-day safety initiative with input from mental health experts.
OpenAI is doubling down on two fronts, product velocity with a billion-dollar acquisition and safety accountability after mounting public pressure. The company is signaling that growth and responsibility now have to scale together.
🔨AI Tools for the Shift
🛒 Thinkfill AI – Cut through the AI chaos with a procurement platform that vets, compares, and finds your perfect match.
📊 Franchise.fyi – Skip endless research with AI-powered franchise analysis backed by real data, risk scores, and growth trends.
🎬 Captioner.io – Add accurate subtitles to your videos in minutes, edit in-browser, and translate with a single click.
🤖 RoboWork – Build and automate AI agents that streamline and scale your customer support workflows.
📸 FiveShots.app – Upload one selfie and get five LinkedIn-ready portraits, polished and professional in minutes.
🚀Quick Shifts
🛒 Amazon launched Lens Live for iOS, letting users shop by scanning real-world objects. AI matches items in real-time, integrates with Rufus, and prioritizes instant buying, Amazon’s direct answer to Google’s Gemini Live.
🍎 Apple’s AI talent is hemorrhaging, with robotics lead Jian Zhang joining Meta and three others from its foundation models team heading to OpenAI (×2) and Anthropic, signaling serious confidence issues.
💡 Mistral AI expanded Le Chat with 20+ new enterprise connectors and launched “Memories” for persistent context, boosting personalization and positioning the platform as a stronger enterprise-grade AI assistant.
🔬 OpenAI unveiled “OpenAI for Science”, a new initiative led by CPO Kevin Weil aimed at developing AI-powered platforms to accelerate scientific discovery by collaborating with top-tier researchers.
🇺🇸 Microsoft struck a deal with the U.S. GSA to offer free Copilot access to existing federal users, alongside discounted cloud tools, saving agencies up to $3 billion through September 2026.
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