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- Anthropic said to weigh up to $50B raise at ~$900B pre-money as ARR nears $45B
Anthropic said to weigh up to $50B raise at ~$900B pre-money as ARR nears $45B
Bay Area Times
May 08, 2026
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Top stories today:
- Anthropic weighs up to $50B raise at ~$900B as ARR nears $45B
- OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.5-Cyber, its Mythos rival
- Kalshi raises $1B at $22B valuation as trading volume hits $178B
- Ramp said to raise $750M at $40B+ valuation, co-led by Iconiq, GIC
- ChatGPT adds Trusted Contact for mental health, safety concerns
0. Data and calendar
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Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of hallucinations):
1. Anthropic said to weigh up to $50B raise at ~$900B pre-money as ARR nears $45B
Anthropic could surpass OpenAI in valuation if the round closes:
Dragoneer, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed are among investors said to be interested.
Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao has reportedly been speaking with investors, though terms have not been finalized.
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3. OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.5-Cyber, its Mythos rival, to vetted cybersecurity firms
GPT-5.5-Cyber has outperformed GPT-5.5 on CyberGym but trails Mythos Preview, which scored 83.1%:
Designed to help defenders write bug proofs of concept and simulate security threats.
Approved Trusted Access for Cyber members will get a less restricted GPT-5.5 model for bug hunting, malware analysis, and attack reverse engineering.
GPT-5.5 with TAC also debuted for OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber members to map attack surfaces and review software patches for flaws.
Meanwhile, White House unease over Mythos has reportedly sparked fears of a shift away from its hands-off AI policy
Representational image generated using ChatGPT.
Vice President JD Vance reportedly expressed alarm in an Apr. call with tech CEOs over Mythos and other advanced AI models.
“We all need to work together on this,” Vance reportedly told CEOs including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, and Sundar Pichai.
An executive order to create formal oversight for frontier AI models is reportedly under consideration.
Washington and Beijing are also said to be weighing official AI-risk talks ahead of next week’s Trump-Xi summit in China.
Mozilla said Mythos Preview and other AI models helped identify and fix 423 Firefox security bugs in Apr., vs. 31 a year earlier.
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5. Kalshi raises $1B at $22B valuation as trading volume hits $178B
