TL;DR:
- Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H funding round, raising its post-money valuation to $965 billion.
- OpenAI maintains an $852 billion valuation following its March round and prepares its public market debut with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
- Data from the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that 90% of firms reported no measurable impact of AI on workplace productivity.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) asserted that most AI companies will go bust in the future. This Friday, the businessman argued that the current sector presents an excessive saturation of participants, making it difficult for developing projects to make progress.
AI will stay and grow exponentially.
But most AI companies will go bust. There are just too many.
Even survivors will see huge price fluctuations.
There will be new survivor entrants too.Same as any other new industry, really.
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) May 29, 2026
CZ’s statements coincide with a historic funding period in the tech industry. Right now, private firms like OpenAI and Anthropic accumulate combined valuations close to $1.8 trillion, drawing massive private capital.
Zhao published a post on his X account pointing out that, artificial intelligence is projected to experience exponential growth over the long term. However, the executive warned that even the projects that manage to thrive will face heavy price fluctuations in their commercial valuations. Based on the current trend, this behavior is expected to replicate the lifecycle observed in other early-stage emerging industries.
Disconnect between high valuations and corporate profitability
Despite warnings from the crypto sector, frontier labs continue to record record capital inflows. According to data published by CNBC, Anthropic announced a $65 billion round led by firms like Altimeter Capital and Sequoia Capital.
This move raised the company’s implied valuation to $965 billion. Concurrently, the firm reported an annualized revenue run rate of $47 billion by late May.
For its part, OpenAI maintains an $852 billion valuation following its mega-funding round last March. Institutional reports indicate that the ChatGPT creator is preparing a confidential S-1 filing to list on the public market starting in September.
However, corporate technology buyers are showing difficulties in converting these investments into clear financial returns. During May, Uber Technologies Inc. reported a slowdown in its global hiring after burning through its entire 2026 annual budget for Anthropic tools in just four months.
The actual operational impact of these tools is unfolding within a cautious environment. OpenAI’s financial projections signal operating losses of up to $74 billion for the year 2028. This figure is contextualized within a data center infrastructure spending plan estimated at $1.4 trillion to be executed over an eight-year period.
The global market will evaluate the sustainability of this financial ecosystem during the next quarter of the year, when the publication of OpenAI’s S-1 form formally reveals the actual state of the company’s financial balance sheets.
