Cloud provider Lambda is raising up to $4 billion at a $14.5 billion pre-money valuation, a round The Wall Street Journal reports could be its last private funding before a planned 2027 IPO. Coatue Management and Blackstone are leading the round. According to an investor letter reviewed by the Journal, Lambda‘s backlog climbed from $15 billion in June to $50 billion in September. Much of that growth appears tied to a $35 billion commitment from Anthropic, which signed a deal with Lambda in late August. The reported figure means Lambda‘s valuation, already up sharply since its 2025 round, may now depend heavily on Anthropic‘s ability to keep paying.

Still, with reliable GPU capacity scarce, investors remain willing to bet on providers with large contracts from major AI labs. For neoclouds like Lambda, the report says, demand is less the problem than the cost of meeting it: data center buildouts are largely funded by debt, Lambda raised an additional $1 billion last week, and lenders are becoming choosier about who gets cash and under what terms. Raising now both sets a reference point for IPO pricing and gives Lambda more capital before public-market scrutiny arrives.

Lambda was reportedly meant to debut on public markets this year but has pushed that back amid market uncertainty. If it does IPO, it will join other Nvidia-backed neoclouds, such as CoreWeave and Nebius, which now rely on their stock’s health to fund data center buildouts. British neocloud Nscale filed for an IPO last month and is expected to begin trading soon. Lambda, Coatue, and Blackstone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.