Two stories landed today that, taken together, mark a real shift. The company behind Claude is on track to become the most valuable AI company on earth, passing OpenAI for the first time. And on the same day, the Pope released the first major document of his papacy, devoted entirely to warning the world about artificial intelligence. One story is about who is winning the AI race. The other is about whether the rest of us are ready for what winning it actually means. Here is what is real, what is still pending, and why both matter.

According to Bloomberg, Anthropic is set to close a funding round of more than $30 billion as soon as this week, at a valuation above $900 billion. If it closes at that level, Anthropic surpasses OpenAI's $852 billion valuation from March and becomes the most valuable private AI company in the world for the first time.

The speed of this is the part worth sitting with. In February 2026, Anthropic closed a round at a $380 billion valuation. That was three months ago. A jump from $380 billion to more than $900 billion in roughly a quarter is almost without precedent at this scale. The round is being co-led by Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer, Altimeter, and Greenoaks, each reportedly putting in around $2 billion, with existing backers including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and General Catalyst also participating.

One honest caveat, because it matters. As of now the deal is not finalized and no term sheet has been signed. Bloomberg's sources describe it as closing "as soon as" this week. So the accurate framing is that Anthropic is on track to pass OpenAI, not that it definitively has. If the round lands as reported, the milestone is real. If it slips or comes in lower, the headline changes. We are reporting it as the strong likelihood it currently is.

What makes investors comfortable at this price is that the revenue is real, not hypothetical. Anthropic is projecting roughly $11 billion in revenue for the quarter ending in June, and has told investors it is on track for its first-ever quarterly operating profit. That is the number underwriting the valuation. Investors are not betting on a someday business. They are pricing a company whose revenue is compounding faster than almost any software company in history.

The bigger picture: the two companies that have defined this entire AI cycle are now neck and neck on valuation, both reportedly heading toward public offerings, with Anthropic eyeing an IPO as soon as October. The underdog that was founded by people who left OpenAI is, by this measure, about to pass the company they left.

Pope Leo XIV released the first encyclical of his papacy today, Magnifica Humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"). An encyclical is the church's highest form of teaching document, and Leo made his first one entirely about protecting human dignity as AI reshapes work and daily life. He signed it exactly 135 years to the day after the church's famous 1891 document on workers' rights, deliberately framing AI as the Industrial Revolution of our era.

Here is the part that ties today together. The Pope personally presented it alongside Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, the same company about to become the most valuable AI lab in the world. Olah, who leads Anthropic's interpretability research, called for "moral voices that the incentives cannot bend." The Pope thanked him directly: "What a great sign of hope it is that with our differences we can listen to one another."

To be clear, the Vatican cautioned this is not a church endorsement of Anthropic. But the optics are striking. On the same day Anthropic passes OpenAI on valuation, its co-founder is standing next to the Pope as a voice for AI ethics, while Anthropic refuses the military and surveillance contracts OpenAI has gone ahead and signed. The company is making its play to be the most valuable lab and the most trusted one at once.

Why it matters: the Pope speaks to 1.4 billion Catholics, and an encyclical shapes the church's stance for decades. When the head of one of the world's largest institutions makes AI his first priority, it signals AI is no longer just a tech story. It is everyone's.

Where things actually stand after today:

Today's news is a good prompt to ask a simple question about your own setup: are you actually using the best model for what you do, or just the one you defaulted to?

Anthropic's rise is built on Claude winning real work, especially coding and long-document reasoning. If you have not compared your main AI tool against Claude on your actual tasks in the last couple months, the models have changed enough that your old choice may be stale. Take one real task you do weekly, run it through Claude, GPT-5.5, and Gemini side by side, and judge the output on your own work, not on benchmarks. It takes ten minutes and it is the only test that actually reflects your use case. The labs are leapfrogging each other constantly right now, so the "best" tool for you may have quietly changed without you noticing.

Anthropic is set to close a $30 billion-plus round this week at a valuation above $900 billion, which would pass OpenAI's $852 billion and make it the most valuable AI company in the world, a jump from $380 billion just three months ago. The deal is not finalized yet, so it is a strong likelihood rather than a done deal, but the revenue behind it is real, with roughly $11 billion projected for Q2 and a first operating profit on track. On the same day, Pope Leo XIV made AI the subject of the first major letter of his papacy, deliberately echoing the church's famous 1891 document on workers' rights to frame AI as the Industrial Revolution of our time. The valuation story is about who is winning. The Pope's letter is about whether the rest of us are ready. Both happened today, and together they mark the moment AI stopped being just a tech story and became everyone's.

Encyclical Letter From The Pope 👉 Here

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