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Anthropic just told investors something that should make every rival lab nervous: its annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, up from $47 billion in May and just $9 billion at the end of last year. That's $18 billion added in two months, and it now puts Anthropic ahead of OpenAI's own $40 billion run rate, a gap that matters a lot given both companies are quietly preparing for IPOs.
Meanwhile, Groq just admitted its chip business, the thing it was actually founded to build, isn't really its business anymore. The company raised $350 million to keep pivoting into a "neocloud" that rents out Nvidia GPUs, at a valuation nearly half what it was a year ago. And separately today, we're revisiting the Claude watermark story, since the backlash from users hasn't died down.
Here’s what happened in AI today:
• Anthropic's annualized revenue hit $65 billion, pulling ahead of OpenAI.
• Groq raised $350 million to keep transforming from a chipmaker into a GPU rental business.
• Separately today, why Claude users are still frustrated about the new watermark, explained.
…and a whole lot more that you can read about below.
• Anthropic's Revenue Just Passed OpenAI's, and It's Not Close
Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate surpassed $65 billion at the end of July, Bloomberg reported, a sevenfold jump from where the company stood at the end of last year. The company generated more than $11.5 billion in preliminary second-quarter revenue alone, more than double its first-quarter number. Investors reportedly expect Anthropic to finish 2026 between $100 billion and $120 billion. For comparison, OpenAI's own run rate recently hit $40 billion.
• Groq Just Gave Up on Being a Chip Company
Groq raised $350 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, down from $6.9 billion a year ago, as it continues pivoting from building its own AI chips to operating a "neocloud" business renting out Nvidia GPU clusters. The move follows Nvidia's $20 billion deal in December to license Groq's chip technology and hire away founder Jonathan Ross along with other top engineers, effectively ending Groq's original chip ambitions. The company says it doesn't see the lower valuation as a down round, calling it instead a fresh baseline for the "post-Nvidia-licensing-deal version of Groq." It now operates 13 data centers globally and plans to scale from 54 megawatts to over 200 megawatts of capacity by 2027.
• Why the Backlash Hasn't Faded
Separately from today's other news, it's worth checking back in on Claude's text watermark, since the frustration from users hasn't gone away since it rolled out. TechCrunch reports Claude users are still upset that Anthropic's new watermark, which embeds an invisible signal into generated text, could flag them for using AI at work or in school, even when they used Claude to edit or polish their own original writing.
The core tension, worth restating plainly: Anthropic itself says a detected watermark proves Claude processed the text, not that Claude wrote the ideas in it. Someone who used Claude to translate, tighten, or proofread their own work will still trigger the same mark as someone who generated an essay from scratch. Anthropic has acknowledged this ambiguity is real and says light editing likely won't remove the watermark, though a full rewrite will.
Today's Job Board
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Build the fine-tuning platform behind foundational voice models for regional languages.
Senior Software Engineer | Method Financial
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Founding AI Engineer | Closure
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Build AI systems that help law enforcement solve crime.
Software Engineer, Fullstack | Aviator
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Lead the infrastructure team behind Athelas's AI-driven health systems technology.
Special Projects Intern, AI Content Generation | Blaze
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Work directly with the CEO on agentic finance content for consumers and businesses.
Founding Design Engineer | Moritz
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Software Product Design Engineer | Y Combinator
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Today's Money Moves 💸
Groq Raises $350M at a $3.5 Billion Valuation
Groq raised $350 million led by investment firm Disruptive, with planned participation from Nvidia, as it continues pivoting from an AI chipmaker into a neocloud operator. Combined with a $650 million round in June, that's roughly $1 billion raised in two months.
Wispr Raises $280M at a $2 Billion Valuation
Wispr, the voice-to-text startup behind Wispr Flow, raised $280 million at a $2 billion valuation as it expands beyond dictation into broader voice-based productivity tools.
Nvidia Invests $1.5B in a SoftBank Data Center Developer
Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion in a SoftBank-backed data center developer connected to an OpenAI infrastructure project, according to reporting today, extending Nvidia's pattern of taking financial stakes across the AI infrastructure it supplies chips to.
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