AI News Roundup: Anthropic Rockets to $350B Valuation as xAI and Claude Battle for AI Supremacy

The AI funding wars have reached a new level of intensity. In the span of 24 hours, we learned that Anthropic is raising $10 billion at a staggering $350 billion valuation - nearly doubling from $183 billion just three months ago - while Elon Musk’s xAI announced a $20 billion Series E. Meanwhile, Meta’s AI division is in turmoil as Yann LeCun publicly confirmed the company “fudged” Llama 4 benchmarks.

Here’s everything that happened on Day 2 of CES 2026 and beyond.

The Big Story: Anthropic’s Meteoric Rise to $350B

Anthropic, the maker of Claude, is reportedly raising a fresh $10 billion round at a $350 billion valuation. The round is being led by Coatue Management and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.

The numbers are staggering. Just three months ago, Anthropic was valued at $183 billion. This new round represents a near-doubling of the company’s value in a single quarter - a pace of appreciation that even by AI standards is exceptional.

What’s driving the surge? Claude’s growing reputation as best-in-class for coding. According to Axios, Claude Code (powered by Claude Opus 4.5) is being praised as superior to Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and even Gemini 3 Pro for software development tasks. The company’s SWE-bench Verified score of 77.2% remains the benchmark to beat.

Adding to the momentum, Microsoft announced today that Anthropic’s Claude models are now automatically enabled by default in Microsoft 365 Copilot for most commercial tenants worldwide. This enterprise distribution deal could significantly accelerate Claude’s adoption in the business market.

With both OpenAI and Anthropic preparing for potential 2026 IPOs, this funding round positions Anthropic as OpenAI’s primary challenger. For context, OpenAI was last valued at around $500 billion - Anthropic is closing the gap fast.

Sources: TechCrunch, Axios, UC Today

Today’s Top Stories

xAI Raises $20 Billion, Valued at $230B

Not to be outdone, Elon Musk’s xAI announced a massive $20 billion Series E round, valuing the Grok developer at approximately $230 billion.

The investor list reads like a who’s who of tech and sovereign wealth: Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX (Abu Dhabi), and Valor Equity Partners all participated. The round gives xAI substantial runway to compete against OpenAI and Anthropic, though it trails both in valuation.

However, xAI’s week hasn’t been entirely smooth. The company filed a federal lawsuit challenging California’s AB 2013, which requires AI firms to disclose training data information. xAI argues the law violates constitutional protections - a legal battle that could have implications across the industry.

Sources: TechCrunch, National Law Review

Yann LeCun Breaks Silence: Meta “Fudged” Llama 4 Benchmarks

The drama at Meta’s AI division deepened significantly today. Yann LeCun, Meta’s former Chief AI Scientist and one of the “godfathers of AI,” publicly confirmed that Meta “fudged” Llama 4 benchmark results.

According to LeCun, the company used different model versions on different benchmarks - essentially cherry-picking results. LeCun also criticized Meta’s new AI chief Alexander Wang as “young” and “inexperienced,” warning that “a lot of people have left, a lot of people who haven’t yet left will leave.”

In a further development, LeCun announced plans for his own startup: Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs. This represents a significant talent drain from Meta, which has relied heavily on LeCun’s reputation and expertise to establish credibility in the open-source AI community.

Meta also faces regulatory headwinds on its $2+ billion acquisition of AI agent startup Manus, which is now under review by Chinese authorities due to the founders’ Chinese citizenship.

Sources: DigiTimes, Fast Company, TechCrunch

Meta Faces “Unprecedented” Demand for AI Wearables

Despite internal turmoil, Meta’s hardware division is thriving. At CES 2026, the company revealed it’s facing “unprecedented demand” for AI wearables, creating supply chain bottlenecks. The enterprise-grade updates to Meta’s wearable ecosystem demonstrate that consumer appetite for AI hardware continues to grow faster than manufacturers can scale.

Source: DigiTimes

Utah Approves First AI System for Medical Prescriptions

In a regulatory first, Utah announced a groundbreaking partnership with Doctronic for AI-powered prescription medication renewals. This is the first state-approved program in the US allowing an AI system to legally participate in medical decision-making for prescription renewals.

The timing coincides with the FDA’s announcement that it will ease regulation of digital health products and AI-enabled devices - following through on the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. The combination of state-level innovation and federal regulatory relaxation could significantly accelerate AI adoption in healthcare.

Sources: Utah Department of Commerce, STAT News

Chinese AI Startups Zhipu and MiniMax Prepare Hong Kong Debuts

Two of China’s largest generative AI startups are set to test global investor appetite with twin Hong Kong IPOs. Zhipu and MiniMax will attempt to demonstrate that Chinese AI can compete globally with OpenAI and its peers. The listings come as DeepSeek faces increasing global scrutiny, with government bans and investigations underway in Australia, Czech Republic, the EU, UK, India, Malaysia, and France.

Sources: Bloomberg, Insurance Journal

Quick Hits

  • ChatGPT Market Share: ChatGPT’s market share fell to 72% from 87% in one year as competitors like Gemini gain traction. - 24/7 Wall St.

  • Nvidia Performance Boost: Nvidia announced 35% faster inference for small language models via Ollama and llama.cpp optimizations, with new NVFP4 and FP8 quantization support. - NVIDIA Technical Blog

  • Snowflake + Gemini 3: Snowflake added Google’s Gemini 3 AI models to its Cortex AI platform. - Seeking Alpha

  • Accenture Acquisition: Accenture is acquiring UK-based Faculty for approximately $1 billion. Faculty CEO Marc Warner will become Accenture CTO. - Accenture Newsroom

  • ElevenLabs Expansion: AI voice company ElevenLabs announced a $33 million R&D investment to expand NYC operations, creating 230 jobs. - NY Governor’s Office

  • Mobileye + Mentee: Mobileye is acquiring AI humanoid robotics company Mentee Robotics for $900 million. - Mobileye News

  • LMArena Unicorn: AI evaluation startup LMArena achieved a $1.7 billion valuation just four months after launching, raising $150 million Series A. - TechCrunch

  • Healthcare AI: OpenAI reports 40+ million people use ChatGPT daily for health-related queries, with 66% of US physicians using AI for at least one healthcare task. - PYMNTS

  • Caterpillar AI: Caterpillar unveiled an AI-powered assistant for construction equipment using Nvidia’s Jetson Thor platform, plus a $25 million workforce development pledge. - Caterpillar Investors

What This Means

Three major themes emerged from today’s news.

The funding hierarchy is crystallizing. With Anthropic at $350B, xAI at $230B, and OpenAI reportedly eyeing a $1 trillion float, we’re seeing a clear top tier emerge in the foundation model race. These aren’t venture investments anymore - they’re sovereign-wealth-scale bets on the companies expected to dominate the AI era. The gap between these leaders and everyone else continues to widen.

Open-source AI credibility is at stake. Meta’s Llama models have been crucial to the open-source ecosystem, but LeCun’s revelations about benchmark manipulation raise serious questions. If users can’t trust published benchmarks, how do they evaluate which models to use? This controversy benefits closed-source providers like Anthropic and OpenAI, who face less competitive pressure from open alternatives.

AI regulation is fragmenting. Utah is approving AI for medical prescriptions while xAI sues California over transparency requirements. The FDA is pulling back oversight while the EU and South Korea discuss coordinated regulation at CES. China is cracking down on “anthropomorphic” chatbots while its startups prepare international IPOs. There’s no global consensus emerging - instead, we’re seeing a patchwork of approaches that companies will need to navigate territory by territory.

The AI funding arms race is now a three-way sprint between OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, with billions of dollars separating them from everyone else. Day 2 of CES 2026 made clear that the stakes - and the checks being written - are only getting larger.

Sources

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