Australia’s largest retail bank has been edging into a game usually dominated by investment banks, committing its own balance sheet to fast-growing tech bets. In March 2025, Commonwealth Bank backed AI lab Anthropic in a funding round that reportedly priced the company at USD61.5 billion.
Anthropic is now said to be raising fresh capital at a valuation above USD900 billion. That shift implies almost a 15-fold paper gain for CBA in little more than a year.
The scale and speed of the revaluation has bank analysts reaching for comparisons usually reserved for Macquarie’s high-conviction plays. Macquarie has long built its reputation by using its own capital to back emerging opportunities, including technology groups such as Nuix.
CBA’s Anthropic windfall lands in the same strategic bucket, but on a performance curve that would impress even seasoned investment bankers. The numbers suggest CBA is no longer content to behave like a plain-vanilla retail lender.
Macquarie, sometimes dubbed the “Silver Donut”, has traditionally set the benchmark in Australia for aggressive, high-upside principal investing. CBA’s Anthropic stake now rivals those storied Macquarie deals in both ambition and payoff potential.
The comparison shows how quickly big retail banks can start to resemble investment houses when they lean into balance sheet risk. Macquarie now faces the uncomfortable prospect that a domestic rival has landed a tech win that outshines many of its own.
