E225: Anthropic secures $183B valuation funding milestone; Revolut achieves $75B valuation share sale; OpenAI expands tender from $6B to $10.3B; OpenAI completes $1.1B Statsig acquisition; OpenAI launches proprietary AI chip development initiative; Lambda

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. AG Dillon is closing six pre-IPo stock funds in September 26, 2025. Andrel, XAI, Grok, Lambda Labs, Together AI, and a space economy company. Use these single stock funds to build bespoke pre-IPO stock portfolios. Use select the pre-IPO stock company exposures and weight allocations to each pre-IPO stock to express your unique investment thesis. Available for purchase at Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and directly at AG Dillon Funds. $2 ,500 minimum investment. Financial advisors only. Email Aaron.Dillon at agdillon.com to invest. Again, that's A-A-R-O-N dot D-I-L-L-O-N at A-G-D-I-L-L-O-N dot com to invest.

0:47All right. Now, the pre-IPO stock update for September 5, 2025. five. Anthropic, the AI large language model company completed a$13 billion funding at a $183 billion post money valuation, nearly tripling its previous valuation led by iconic capital with co-leads from Fidelity and Lightspeed Venture Partners and participation from GIC, Inside Partners and Qatar Investment Authority. The round marks one of the largest funding rounds for an AI company. Anthropix started 2025 with a billion dollar run rate revenue and surpassed five billion dollars just eight months later in August of 2025, established as one of the fastest growing technology companies in history.

1:32Revolut, the fintech company offering banking payments and currency exchange services, launched a secondary share sale at a 75 billion dollar valuation. new and existing shareholders participated. The company also initiated a tender offer to purchase up to 10 % of its shares from eligible investors, prioritizing early investors as part of the efforts to remain private longer. Revolut has grown its active customers by 35 % year over year, with total customers now standing at 35 million as of mid-2025. OpenAI, the AI large language model company, expanded its current tender offer round to$10.3 billion, up from an initial$6 billion.

2:17The tender's valuation remains at$500 billion valuation. OpenAI closed a$300 billion convertible note round earlier in the first half of 2025. The$500 billion tender round allows current and former employees, that's folks who have hold shares for over two years, to sell stock by the end of September with the deal closing in October. SoftBank, Dragoneer, Thrive, Abu Dhabi's MGX and T. Rowe Price are participating. In November of 2024, OpenAI completed another employee tender offer where$1.5 billion in shares were purchased by SoftBank. OpenAI's ChatGPT boasts 800 million weekly active users and is generating$12 billion in annual revenue by 2025, doubling since January of 2025.

3:04That's just seven months. Great growth there. OpenAI also acquired product testing startup Statsig for$1.1 billion in an all-stock deal. Statsig was founded in 2021 and is fresh off a$100 million raise at a$1.1 billion valuation. The company's CEO, Vijay Raji, will join OpenAI as technology chief in the applications unit, reporting to Fiji Simo, who was appointed in May of 2025. The acquisition follows Johnny Ives AI devices startup, I.O. acquisition for$6.5 billion in May of 2025 and analytics database rocket set in 2024 for an undisclosed amount. Statsig enhances OpenAI's capabilities in product experimentation and data analytics for Statsig's platform, having been used by 500 enterprise customers to run over 10 ,000 experiments annually.

3:59OpenAI is posed to begin mass production of its first proprietary AI chip in 2026, co-designed with Broadcom to challenge NVIDIA's dominance and enable independent semiconductor capabilities. This marks a shift from its reliance on third-party chips where it previously spent$7 billion annually on NVIDIA GPUs. The chip, aimed at accelerating AI model training by 40 % over current solutions, will initially produce 50 ,000 units in its first year at a foundry in Taiwan, with plans to scale to 200 ,000 units by 2028. OpenAI has spent$5 billion on the effort. If OpenAI and Broadcam are able to deliver, they'll control 15 % of the AI chip market by 2030, according to industry analysts.

4:46Lambda Labs, the AI, NVIDIA, GPU cloud provider has engaged Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Citi to prepare for a US IPO as early as the first half of 2026. Lambda is currently raising a billion dollar primary around a$6 billion post-money valuation. NVIDIA agreed this summer to lease back 18 ,000 of its own AI chips from Lambda over four years for$1.5 billion, comprising of 10 ,000 GPUs for$1.3 billion and 8 ,000 more for$200 million. Lambda customers, other Lambda customers include Amazon and Microsoft. Mistral AI, the AI large language model business, is reportedly nearing a$2.1 billion investment run and a$14 billion post-money valuation.

5:32This more than doubles its June 2024 valuation of$6.2 billion. Mistral previously raised over$1.1 billion from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst. The company focuses on open source language models and Le Chat AI bot targeting European users, the company's French business. amid a broader trend where European AI investments rose 55 % year-over-year in Q1 2025, and 12 European startups hit unicorn status in the first half of 2025. Sierra, the customer service AI agent company, secured$350 million in a new funding round at a$10 billion valuation, more than doubling its prior valuation.

6:14The company was founded in early 2024 by Brett Taylor, who's currently the OpenAI chairman, and Clay Bavar to assist enterprises in building customer service AI agents. The round was led by Green Oaks Capital with involvement from Iconic, Thrive, Sequoia, and Benchmark. Total funding for the company is now$635 million after earlier rounds of$110 million in February of 24, led by Sequoia Benchmark, and$175 million in October of 24, led by Green Oaks. Within 18 months, Sierra has onboarded hundreds of customers such as SoFi, Ramp, and Brex. Taylor previously found Equip, which sold to Salesforce for$750 million in 2016.

6:56Open Evidence, the ChatGPT for doctors, startup offering an AI chatbot for clinicians to assess medical information, is evaluating multiple investment offers at a$6 billion valuation, nearly doubling its prior mark following a$210 million Series B round in July of 25, led by Kleiner Perkins and GV that valued it at$3.5 billion. The platform has seen rapid adoption with 40 % of U.S. doctors using it for tasks like finding health data. Pinecone, a leading AI vector database startup, is exploring a potential sale amid intensifying competition from major providers like Amazon Web Services and shifts by AI model developers that have diminished the need for standalone vector databases.

7:44The company, which has recently lost a major customer previously, raised$100 million in April of 2023 with a$750 million valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz and participation from Iconic Growth. Klarna, the customer credit and online payments company, aims to raise up to 1.27 billion via a US IPO by offering 34.3 million shares at 35 to$37 each, potentially achieving a$14 billion market value at the upper end based on outstanding shares per filing with the US SEC. In Q2 2025, Klarna is showing 20 % year-on-year revenue growth to 823 million, adjusted operating profit of$29 million, up from$1 million from the prior year, and a 31 % surge in active customers to$111 million.

8:38Clarin has a$12.2 billion secondary market valuation, adds up 82.8 % versus this July 2022 round. So this IPO goes off of$14 billion. Current private market investors should see a nice little pop there. Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winslow. Inkelboss is gearing up for a Nasdaq IPO under the ticker GEMI. The IPO will offer 16.7 million shares at$17 to$19 each for a midpoint market cap of$2.1 billion and a projected proceeds of$272 million. Gemini competes with Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood. The company reported$68.6 million in first half 2025 revenue alongside a$282 million net loss and manages$18 billion in assets as of June 30, 2025.

9:34And it has logged$285 billion in lifetime trading volume through July of 2025. That's versus Coinbase's$237 billion in just the last quarter alone, to give you a size context. SpaceX, the space payload delivery and satellite internet company, secured FAA approval for up to 120 annual launches from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This more than doubles the prior 50 launch limit. Additionally, a new on-site landing zone was also approved for up to 34 booster landings per year. SpaceX executed 60 launches in 2022 and 132 in 2024 and pursuing approval for up to 100 Falcon launches annually from California's Vandenberg Space Force base.

10:22SpaceX has a$404 billion secondary market valuation. It's up 1 % versus July 2025 round that just closed. AnySphere, the company behind the AI-powered coding assistant cursor, has drawn preliminary interest from OpenAI, XAI, and Anthropic for deals to license or acquire data on how millions of software engineers use the tool for coding tests. The data has potential to aid improvements in AI models for coding and reasoning like scientific hypothesis testing. No agreements are confirmed. Facing high AI model costs that strains margins, AnySphere acts as a customer and pre-launch tester for models from these customers while vying in the coding assistant space.

11:09Replit's CEO, which is a competitor, Amjan Massad, questions the value of the broad user data over curated samples for the foundational AI large language model providers. So maybe the data is not so good. And Vercel is another AI-powered coding assistant, has declined data cell overtures due to security concerns. AnySphere has a$18.8 billion secondary market valuation. It's up 81 % versus its March 2025 round. Okay, that's it for me this week. Thanks and see you all next week.