Why Anthropic Just Walked Into $5 Trillion of Market Cap

A $380 billion AI company is now competing with $5 trillion in financial incumbents. Here is what it means for European business.

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Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI company behind Claude, has closed a $30 billion Series G funding round at a $380 billion post-money valuation — more than doubling its September 2025 valuation of $183 billion. The round, led by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Coatue, arrives weeks after the company’s Claude Cowork plug-ins and Opus 4.6 model release triggered nearly $1 trillion in cumulative losses across software, financial data and professional services stocks worldwide. Anthropic’s annualised revenue run rate has reached $14 billion, with eight of the Fortune 10 now Claude customers. The company is now competing directly with financial incumbents representing more than $5 trillion in combined market capitalisation — and targeting a public listing by late 2026.

What happened to financial services stocks?

When Anthropic released industry-specific plug-ins for its Claude Cowork tool on 30 January 2026, markets barely reacted. Three trading days later, investors connected the dots: the foundation model company was no longer just selling API access. It was shipping complete workflow solutions aimed directly at end users in finance, law and data analytics — at $20 per month.

The selloff was swift and broad. FactSet Research Systems fell 10.5 per cent. Thomson Reuters plunged 18 per cent — its worst single-day drop on record. RELX, parent of LexisNexis, lost 14 per cent. The London Stock Exchange Group dropped 8 per cent. S&P Global, Moody’s and Morningstar all saw sharp declines. In India, Tata Consultancy Services sank 6 per cent and Infosys fell 7 per cent. Analysts dubbed it “Software-mageddon.”

Then on 6 February, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.6 — a model capable of orchestrating teams of autonomous AI agents — and the selloff deepened toward $1 trillion in cumulative losses. As we explored in our analysis of why European markets are hitting all-time highs, capital allocation is being reshaped by structural shifts — and the repricing of financial incumbents against AI disruptors is one of the most significant.

Why is Anthropic competing with $5 trillion in incumbents?

Until January 2026, the AI value chain had a clean separation. Foundation model companies like Anthropic and OpenAI built the models. Application-layer companies like Salesforce, Thomson Reuters and FactSet built the workflows. Everyone stayed in their lane.

Anthropic’s plug-ins broke that arrangement. By shipping domain-specific tools for legal research, financial modelling, sales automation and data analysis directly inside Claude Cowork, the company signalled it was prepared to compete with its own customers. The foundation model maker had moved into the application layer.

The financial services tools were particularly pointed. Claude for Financial Services, first launched in July 2025, had already integrated with data providers including FactSet, PitchBook, Morningstar, Daloopa and S&P Global. The October 2025 update added an Excel add-in, real-time market data connectors and pre-built agent skills for building discounted cash flow models and initiating coverage reports. By February 2026, the offering had evolved from a supplement to analyst workflows into something that looked increasingly like a replacement for parts of them.

The scale of the threatened incumbents is enormous. S&P Global alone commands a market capitalisation north of $150 billion. Add Moody’s, MSCI, FactSet, LSEG, Morningstar, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg and the major consultancies and the combined figure comfortably exceeds $5 trillion in enterprise value. These firms generate hundreds of billions in annual revenue from precisely the kind of structured knowledge work that frontier AI models are learning to perform.

How are incumbents responding?

The incumbents face a strategic bind. Many of them are already Anthropic’s partners — FactSet, PitchBook and S&P Global all provide data feeds into Claude’s financial analysis platform. Cutting off access risks ceding ground to rivals who maintain it. Maintaining access risks training the very system that could disintermediate them.

Some are adapting fast. Salesforce launched the Agentic Enterprise Licence Agreement, offering flat-rate access to its Agentforce product. ServiceNow shifted to consumption-based pricing. Microsoft introduced new pricing tiers for Copilot Studio. The application-layer companies are restructuring their business models faster than the market initially gave them credit for. As we reported in our coverage of the EU’s evolving financial rules, regulatory convergence between AI-enabled and traditional financial services frameworks is accelerating.

What should European business leaders watch?

For Europe, the implications are acute. London remains a global hub for financial data and analytics — LSEG, Experian, RELX and Sage Group all took significant hits in the February selloff. European IT services firms, from Capgemini to Sopra Steria, face the same structural questions as their Indian counterparts about the long-term viability of knowledge-work outsourcing models.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is deepening its enterprise footprint. A partnership with Accenture announced in December will see 30,000 professionals trained on Claude, with an initial focus on regulated industries including financial services. In February, Infosys announced a separate partnership with Anthropic to build AI agents for compliance reporting, risk assessment and personalised customer interactions. HUB International, one of the world’s largest insurance brokerages, deployed Claude across its entire 20,000-strong workforce and reported an 85 per cent productivity increase in targeted use cases.

As we examined in our analysis of Europe’s top corporate gateways, cities like Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam are competing for global capital flows — and the ability to integrate AI-native financial infrastructure is becoming part of that contest.

Anthropic is also reportedly targeting a public listing by late 2026. If the company goes public at or near its current valuation, it would instantly rank among the 20 most valuable companies in the world — built on a business model designed to absorb the revenue streams of the firms it is displacing.

A four-year-old company valued at $380 billion is now positioned against $5 trillion in financial incumbents. Whether those incumbents adapt or are abstracted away may be the defining question for financial services in the second half of this decade.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Anthropic’s current valuation and how did it get there?

Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G funding round in February 2026 at a $380 billion post-money valuation, more than doubling its $183 billion valuation from just five months earlier. The round was led by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Coatue, with participation from Microsoft, Nvidia, Founders Fund, D. E. Shaw Ventures and others. The company’s annualised revenue has reached $14 billion, driven by rapid enterprise adoption of its Claude models and its AI coding tool Claude Code, which alone generates $2.5 billion in annualised revenue. Eight of the Fortune 10 are now Claude customers, and over 500 companies spend more than $1 million annually on the platform.

Why did Anthropic’s product launches trigger a trillion-dollar stock selloff?

Anthropic’s release of industry-specific plug-ins for Claude Cowork on 30 January 2026, followed by the launch of Claude Opus 4.6 on 6 February, triggered nearly $1 trillion in cumulative losses across global software, financial data and professional services stocks. Investors panicked because the releases signalled that Anthropic was moving from the foundation model layer into the application layer — directly competing with companies like Thomson Reuters, FactSet, S&P Global, RELX and Salesforce by offering domain-specific automation tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional enterprise software subscriptions.

How does Anthropic’s move into financial services affect European companies?

Several major European companies were hit hard by the February 2026 selloff, including the London Stock Exchange Group, Experian, RELX, Sage Group and Wolters Kluwer. European IT services firms such as Capgemini and Sopra Steria face similar structural pressures. At the same time, Anthropic is expanding its European enterprise presence through partnerships with Accenture and Infosys that focus on regulated industries. For European business leaders, the key question is whether the continent’s financial centres can integrate AI-native infrastructure quickly enough to remain competitive as cognitive automation reshapes the global financial services stack.

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