GIC invested in Anthropic 3 times in a year, AI behemoth valued at S$1.2 trillion

Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC has released its annual report for FY2025/26, posting a 3.4 per cent real rate of return and 5.6 per cent nominal return in USD terms over a 20-year period ending Mar. 31, 2026.

Anthropic, the U.S. company behind the Claude AI models, was featured as one of its key AI investments.

How GIC invests

GIC's portfolio is globally diversified across three broad asset groups: Equities (56 per cent), Fixed Income (22 per cent) and Real Assets (22 per cent) as at Mar. 31, 2026.

Geographically, the Americas account for the largest share at 53 per cent, followed by Asia Pacific at 22 per cent and Europe, Middle East and Africa at 19 per cent.

Beyond AI, GIC is also expanding significantly in hedge funds, planning to deploy US$30 billion (S$38.7 billion) over the next three years having already tripled its hedge fund investments over the past decade.

The fund is also investing in infrastructure, including utilities, transport and digital infrastructure, as well as venture capital focused on category-creating companies across the AI value chain.

GIC backed Anthropic three times in under a year

GIC has backed Anthropic three times in under a year. It first invested in Sep. 2025, then led a US$30 billion (S$38.7 billion) funding round in Feb. 2026, valuing Anthropic at US$380 billion (S$490.4 billion).

It then co-led a US$65 billion (S$83.9 billion) round in May 2026, valuing the company at US$965 billion (approx. S$1.2 trillion).

GIC did not disclose the size of its current stake.

Anthropic's run-rate revenue rose from around US$9 billion at the end of 2025 to roughly US$47 billion (S$60.7 billion) today, a more than fivefold increase in under a year.

GIC does not just invest in Anthropic. It also uses Claude, Anthropic's AI model, internally as part of its own enterprise AI platform, alongside GPT, making it simultaneously a backer and a user of the product it helped fund.

Why GIC is bullish on AI

GIC said in its report that its confidence in AI as a long-term investment has grown steadily since it first invested in the space in 2022.

The report stated:

"Since then, we have furthered our conviction in this space as AI has reached a point of real-world impact.

It is no longer a question of whether it can create economic value, but where and how fast.

Just two years ago, that was an open debate, but it no longer is."

GIC's Enterprise AI Survey, conducted in Q1 2026 across nearly 200 North American companies spanning technology, healthcare, financial services and consumer sectors, found that more than half of respondents ranked AI among their top three priorities, with one in five placing it as their single topmost priority.

Enterprises are already reaping savings from AI adoption across finance, customer service, customer onboarding and non-software research and development, the GIC report said.

How GIC picks AI winners

Rather than seeking broad exposure to AI, GIC said it invests granularly using two frameworks.

The first maps where to look across the AI value chain, split into three categories: Enablers, which build foundational infrastructure such as computing hardware and energy systems; Monetisers, which develop AI-powered products and services; and Adopters, which integrate AI into existing operations to improve processes and unlock growth.

The second framework defines what to look for in each company, what GIC calls the three Ms:

1. Moat, or structural advantages such as proprietary data and governance.
2. Management, meaning leaders who turn AI into real business outcomes and reskill their workforce.
3. Momentum, the self-reinforcing cycle where early wins generate better data and better AI performance.

GIC's other AI bets

Beyond Anthropic, GIC highlighted four other AI investments in its report.

Databricks, a data and AI platform used by over 20,000 organisations globally, which GIC has backed across multiple funding rounds. Its revenue run-rate stands at US$5.4 billion (S$S$6.97 billion), growing over 65 per cent year-on-year.

Ramp, a financial operations platform that uses AI to automate corporate expense management, which GIC has backed eight times. Its latest funding round valued the company at US$44 billion (S$56.8 billion), and over two-thirds of its code is now written by its own internal AI tool.

athenahealth, a cloud-based healthcare software provider that GIC co-invested in alongside Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital in 2022. Its AI medical coding has helped some medical practices recover 30 per cent more revenue on initially denied insurance claims.

Eli Lilly, the world's largest pharmaceutical company by market value, which has its own NVIDIA supercomputer called LillyPod and works with AI-native companies including Isomorphic Labs.

AI and sustainability: a double-edged force

GIC also flagged AI's growing impact on the sustainability landscape, describing it as both a challenge and an opportunity for investors.

The International Energy Agency estimates that global electricity consumption by data centres will more than double by 2030, accounting for roughly 10 per cent of the expected increase in global power demand.

This surge is driving investment in nuclear power, renewables and natural gas to diversify energy supply.

At the same time, GIC noted that AI is emerging as a catalyst for sustainability innovation, enabling more efficient energy management, predictive maintenance for renewable assets, optimisation of grid operations, and breakthroughs in materials science, carbon capture technologies and climate modelling that could lower the cost and complexity of decarbonisation.

It sees opportunities in businesses that strengthen energy resilience, including regulated electric networks and utilities, grid efficiency solutions, and power equipment businesses with strong pricing power.

The fund also noted that expanding renewable capacity remains the quickest way to add electricity supply, while modernising power grids is essential to integrate low-carbon sources and maintain reliability.

Risks GIC is watching

GIC acknowledged it is cautious about near-term risks in the AI space, including stretched valuations, over-regulation, business model uncertainty as the industry figures out where to deploy the most advanced models, and bottlenecks to growth such as power, compute and memory constraints.

The report noted that hyperscaler capital expenditure is now approaching 2 per cent of United States GDP, and that while efficiency gains from better chip design are helping, AI infrastructure's supply chain and power constraints will persist.

GIC CEO Lim Chow Kiat said in a statement:

"We will continue to focus on active investing which requires the judgement to allocate capital well and with granularity, the discipline to stay diversified, and the agility to act when good opportunities arise.

By combining these strengths with our long-term horizon, we are confident that we can keep delivering good real returns for Singapore over the years ahead."