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Singaporean investment firms are riding the AI wave, hoping to benefit from developments in the industry. Just three weeks ago, Temasek and GIC increased their investment in one of the most promising basic AI companies, Anthropic, the developers of Claude AI.
It was Temasek’s second round and GIC’s third, after previous rounds in February 2026 and September last year.
Although we don’t know how much money each person invested directly, although GIC participated in two recent rounds as well Business Times we suggested that we talk about “billions,” knowing what Anthropic’s valuation was in each category (all post-financial figures):
- Series F (Sept 2025): US$183 billion
- Series G (Feb 2026): US$380 billion
- Series H (May 2026): US$965 billion
This is important because, along with SpaceX and OpenAI, Anthropic is the most anticipated multi-billion dollar technology IPO of the year. The polymarket bet has a 50% or higher chance of reaching US$1.8 trillion when it goes public sometime in the fall.
This means institutional investors are looking at roughly double the return on Series H, and as much as 10x by Sept 2025. Not bad for just one year.
This could be the best investment Singapore funds have ever made, which begs the question—why Anthropic and not OpenAI? Why Claude and not ChatGPT?
Less is more
After all, it was ChatGPT that introduced the AI revolution in Nov 2022. Since then, all other companies have been seen as followers rather than leaders of the race. Google is famously embarrassed by its first Bard service, while OpenAI continues to gain steam, leaving the competition in the dust.
Today, Google has caught up, after years of development and huge reach thanks to its search engine. Both ChatGPT and Gemini now have close to 1 billion monthly active users. Meanwhile, Claude is estimated to be used by between 20 and 50 million people. Ten times a few.
However, in terms of revenue, it reportedly pulls in almost twice what OpenAI does (closer to US$50 billion compared to US$25 billion on an annualized basis as of Apr/May 2026).
The big shakeup happened last year, when Anthropic had its breakthrough moment—the launch of the Claude Code.
A smart code agent has allowed it to capture a very profitable market segment: the business customer. Companies around the world quickly adopted CC to greatly improve and expand their in-house coding capabilities, as it was the first AI tool that worked with high precision.
OpenAI may have millions of people paying $20 to use ChatGPT, but Anthropic has thousands of companies paying thousands, if not millions, of dollars for business intelligence automation.
The difference wouldn’t be too obvious: about 85% of Anthropic’s revenue comes from enterprise customers, while 85% of OpenAI’s revenue comes from individual users.
That’s why the former already has a higher valuation—US$965 billion compared to US$852 billion—and is expected to appreciate even more following the IPO.
GIC and Temasek’s interest and commitment to Anthropic is, therefore, not surprising.
In fact, it may have its own source of insight, given how many different businesses both organizations have invested in. They see the tools that companies use and how satisfied they are with them. And if it shows up in the target company’s finances, that means it’s a deal.
Anthropic’s competitors are trying to compete, but so far, neither OpenAI nor Google has been able to create a worthy competitor. The Claude Code is successful because it understands its audience: engineers who live at the airport, where Claude can do wonders, working as a talented young engineer who needs guidance and supervision from time to time, but otherwise can do the work himself.
Furthermore, once an organization adopts a technology solution, it becomes more difficult to abandon it. In the world of plugins, ditching Claude to move to a different provider can only be justified if another company is doing significantly better than that. So far, that doesn’t seem to be dangerous.
Unlike fickle consumers, who cannot unsubscribe overnight, companies move slowly and avoid change unless absolutely necessary.
While its competitors are pursuing a mass market level, Anthropic is focused on a niche with big needs and deep pockets. This has become a smart move, and Singapore will benefit from it as well.
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Featured Image Credit: rafapress/depositphotos
