- Anthropic’s secondary valuation hits $1.2 trillion, a 550% jump that puts it above OpenAI’s $908 billion
- Trades rarely close as employees and early backers refuse to sell, pushing buyers toward riskier SPV deals
- Anthropic has confidentially filed for an IPO, with no timeline yet for a listing
Anthropic has a problem most startups would envy: too many buyers and almost no sellers.
According to a Business Insider report, shares of Anthropic are now changing hands on secondary markets at an implied $1.2 trillion valuation, a 550% increase from a year ago and well above the $965 billion Series H it closed in late May. That puts it ahead of OpenAI, whose shares trade at around $908 billion on the same platforms.
Why nobody’s selling
The gap between the two companies is less about Anthropic’s fundamentals pulling away and more about a market structure that rewards scarcity over growth.
Secondary markets only function when employees or early investors are willing to part with shares, and right now almost none are. Brokers tracking the trades describe a near-total absence of willing sellers, which is pushing prices up independent of any new revenue or product news.
That imbalance has pushed some buyers toward unconventional offers, including exchanging homes for Anthropic stock, a sign of how far demand has outrun the available supply.
The SPV problem Anthropic can’t control
Most of the trades that do happen run through special-purpose vehicles, which pool capital from multiple buyers into a single transaction. Anthropic has publicly disavowed them: the company’s own website tells prospective investors to assume any indirect route into Anthropic stock is invalid.
That warning has done little to slow demand. It is a sign the company is benefiting from a market it does not control and cannot easily police, which matters for anyone trying to price the stock accurately ahead of a public listing.
Interest in OpenAI has picked up too, following the release of its GPT-5.6 model series, though the gap in buyer interest between the two companies remains wide. Separately, xAI closed a $20 billion Series E before being folded into SpaceX as a subsidiary.
What the number actually means
Secondary pricing is not a primary valuation. These are illiquid, minority positions with no board rights and no guaranteed path to liquidity — a distinction worth keeping in mind given how fast this figure has moved. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June, though it has given no timeline for going public.
The 550% jump says less about Anthropic’s actual worth than about how few shares are available at any price. Once the company goes public and that scarcity disappears, the real test is whether $1.2 trillion holds up against an open market rather than a handful of desperate buyers.
