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Anthropic’s announcement that it pulled in a staggering $30 billion and now sits at a $380 billion valuation should set off alarm bells in every corner of Washington and Wall Street. This is not small venture capital anymore; it is an unprecedented concentration of private power backing an AI stack that can reshape speech, markets, and even elections. The scale of this deal and the players behind it make clear that the AI arms race has left the era of small startups behind.
Elon Musk responded the way any vigilant citizen of a free society should when faced with concentrated tech influence, calling out Anthropic on his platform and alleging their models show bias against certain groups, then labeling the outfit “misanthropic and evil.” Whether you admire Musk or not, his willingness to name problems and demand fixes is a corrective to the smug silence of so many in the elite tech establishment. The fight over how these models are built, and whose values they embed, is a fight for the future of free expression.
Let us not pretend this is merely about clever algorithms; sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, and Big Tech poured capital behind this round, with GIC and Coatue listed as lead backers alongside major institutional names. When state-backed investors and the biggest money managers are lining up, it becomes not just a matter of market competition but of geopolitical and commercial leverage. Americans deserve to know whether strategic capabilities are being concentrated in companies that answer primarily to deep-pocketed insiders and global partners.
Anthropic’s rocket ride was bought with a narrative about safety and responsibility, but safety can become a pretext for gatekeeping when unchecked. The company’s rise from a small OpenAI offshoot to a behemoth after a Super Bowl push and a massive funding surge shows how marketing, money, and influence can accelerate dominance faster than meaningful oversight. Conservatives should be skeptical of any private monopoly that promises protection while gaining the power to shape public discourse and economic life.
Meanwhile, the founders who left OpenAI and built Anthropic are now suddenly billionaires by the dozen, and some have loudly pledged to give much of that fortune away. Pledges sound noble, but they do not substitute for democratic accountability or competitive restraints. When the same people who doubled their fortunes start lecturing the rest of the country about how to think and speak, the public has a right to demand transparency about algorithms, contracts, and control.
This episode should prompt lawmakers to act rather than applaud from the sidelines. Anthropic itself has tried to influence regulation and present a safety-first face to Capitol Hill, which only underscores the need for independent audits, clear liability rules, and export controls where necessary. If conservatives want to defend free markets and free people, we must insist that the markets remain open, accountable, and not commandeered by an oligarchy of tech elites.
Hardworking Americans do not want tech overlords dictating speech, skewing information, or deciding which businesses survive on the basis of private AI gatekeeping. The $30 billion reckoning is a wake-up call: either America reasserts democratic oversight and competitive fairness, or a few well-funded firms will write the rules for everyone. Call this what it is—an elite squeeze on power that must be resisted by citizens who still believe in limited government, honest markets, and the right to speak and work without unseen algorithms picking winners and losers.
