Elon Musk publicly reversed his earlier view of Anthropic on Thursday, stating he was 'clearly wrong' to doubt the AI company and pledging not to use SpaceXAI’s compute leverage to harm a competitor. Musk acknowledged Anthropic as the current leader in AI, noting no company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable. He stated he would never cut off Anthropic’s access in a damaging way, emphasizing that such tactics are 'not my style' despite the competition between their respective AI businesses.

The exchange followed a claim on X that SpaceXAI now runs a frontier model competitive with Anthropic’s Opus 4.8, while Anthropic depends on short-term compute leased from SpaceXAI. Anthropic signed a May deal for 300 megawatts of compute from xAI’s Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee. The financial terms of the agreement specify a payment of $1.25 billion a month through May 2029.

SpaceXAI stated that the partnership grants Anthropic access to Colossus 1, which includes more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs. The facility is designed for AI training, fine-tuning, inference, and high-performance computing. Anthropic plans to utilize this compute capacity to improve services for Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers.

Musk cited several examples to illustrate his approach to fair competition, including Tesla’s patent pledge and the decision to open the Supercharger network to rivals. He also referenced SpaceX’s pricing for competing satellite launches and X’s tolerance for criticism on its platform. 'Even my worst enemies can attack me on this platform,' Musk wrote.

The comments come after Anthropic’s June launch of Claude Fable 5 and restricted Mythos 5. SpaceXAI countered on July 8 with the release of Grok 4.5, a model described as aimed at coding and agentic work. Meanwhile, Anthropic is reportedly moving toward public markets, having confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering on June 1, though timing and terms remain undisclosed.

Institutional investors deployed a record $198 billion into private equity and venture capital coinvestments between January 1 and June 25, 2026, as artificial intelligence funding rounds reshape private markets. This figure has already exceeded the full-year totals recorded in five of the last six years and positions 2026 to surpass the $253 billion invested across all of 2025. The surge is driven largely by high-conviction AI deals, with limited partners increasingly investing directly alongside firms to lower fees and gain greater control over portfolio construction.

AI funding leads the surge

The momentum is anchored by a select group of massive AI financings. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, three funding rounds for Anthropic—including the company's $65 billion raise—and a major financing for rival xAI ranked among the 10 largest global coinvestment transactions completed since the start of 2025. These deals highlight a shift where institutional investors bypass traditional fund commitments to secure direct exposure to specific high-growth companies.

Infrastructure focus dominates Q2

A review of the five largest private funding rounds tracked by Forge Global during the second quarter reveals a common theme: the biggest winners are companies developing foundational AI models, autonomous defense systems, enterprise automation platforms, computing infrastructure and AI deployment tools. Leading the list was Anthropic, which raised a staggering $65 billion Series H round, valuing the company at approximately $965 billion as it prepares for a potential public offering.

Defense technology company Anduril secured a $5 billion financing to expand manufacturing capacity, accelerate autonomous defense products and invest in next-generation military technologies. Meanwhile, Reflection AI raised $2.5 billion to automate complex knowledge work and recently partnered with SpaceX to support the aerospace company's growing AI computing ambitions. Long Lake closed a $2.25 billion funding round while pursuing an acquisition of American Express Global Business Travel, betting that AI-powered workflows can transform a traditional services business. Baseten rounded out the top five with a $1.5 billion raise to expand its AI inference platform.

Quarterly and investor breakdown

Coinvestment activity remained robust throughout the first half of 2026. The second quarter generated $74.68 billion in coinvestments. While this trailed the exceptionally strong first quarter, it exceeded every quarterly figure recorded in 2023 and 2024, underscoring sustained demand for large-scale transactions.

Sovereign wealth funds led the activity, participating in $178.12 billion of direct investments through June 30. This total is nearly double the combined capital invested by pension funds, endowments, and family offices. Pension funds accelerated their pace, deploying $76 billion in the first half of 2026, which already surpasses the $59.59 billion invested in all of 2025.

Beyond AI: Infrastructure and buyouts

While AI dominates the headlines, other sectors also saw significant activity. Major transactions included Silver Lake's $55.2 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts, AES Corp.'s $48.1 billion infrastructure deal, Aligned Data Centers' $40 billion financing, and Waymo's $16 billion funding round. These deals illustrate that infrastructure and buyouts remain active, even as AI commands the largest private funding rounds on record.

S&P Global Market Intelligence noted that direct coinvestments are becoming a critical mechanism for the world's largest institutional investors to gain exposure to the AI sector alongside established private market managers. If the current pace continues, 2026 is on track to set another annual record for global private equity and venture capital coinvestment activity.