Anthropic is trading at around $1 trillion on Forge Global, where investors buy and sell shares in private companies, according to its CEO Kelly Rodriques, who confirmed the activity to Business Insider on April 23. OpenAI shares, by contrast, are trading at about $880 billion on the same platform.
The divergence is striking. Anthropic last raised funding at a $380 billion valuation in February and is now trading at roughly 2.6 times that level. OpenAI, which closed a round at $852 billion in March, is already trading below its most recent valuation.
Secondary markets allow investors to trade shares in private companies ahead of an IPO. Prices here reflect what buyers are willing to pay in real time, rather than valuations negotiated privately with a small group of venture capital firms. As a result, they are often seen as a more immediate gauge of market sentiment.
That sentiment currently favours Anthropic. One shareholder has offered stock at a $1.15 trillion valuation, according to Ken Sawyer of Saints Capital, while a major growth fund has bid $1.05 trillion, according to Jesse Leimgruber, founder of OpenHome, in a post on X.
Demand appears intense. Glen Anderson, CEO of Rainmaker Securities, said deals are closing almost as quickly as they appear. “We get an offer, and then within a day someone else has already bought it. There are almost no sellers,” he told Business Insider.
OpenAI is seeing the opposite dynamic. “OpenAI has been a very tepid market,” Anderson said. “The sentiment has certainly shifted to Anthropic.”
Louis Eriakha
Why Nobody Wants to Sell Anthropic Shares
The surge in interest is partly tied to growth. Anthropic’s revenue reached an estimated $30 billion annually by March, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, according to research firm Sacra, suggesting rapid expansion in demand for its AI products.
Investors already holding shares are in no rush to sell. Bradley Horowitz, a general partner at Wisdom Ventures, said his firm receives constant inbound offers. “We receive daily offers from the ridiculous to the sublime. I barely open those emails because we’re not interested. We are playing a long game,” he told Business Insider.
There is also a signalling effect at play. “It’s almost less about the return than being able to say they’re an Anthropic investor,” Anderson said, noting that some venture firms and family offices see ownership as a status marker as much as a financial bet.
Still, investors point to fundamentals. Anthropic has raised significant capital, built a growing enterprise customer base, and is scaling quickly. Anderson described the company’s trajectory as “an epic run,” with investors eager to secure what he called “a generational opportunity in AI,” adding that “Anthropic is in the pole position.”
What This Means When IPOs Start
Both Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to go public later this year, and secondary market activity is offering an early signal of how those listings might be priced.
For Anthropic, the risk is clear. If it lists below current secondary valuations, late buyers could face steep losses. For OpenAI, trading below its last funding round raises questions about whether its private valuation will hold up in public markets.
For now, by one of Wall Street’s most closely watched signals — what investors are willing to pay today — Anthropic appears to have taken the lead. Whether that lead holds will depend on how both companies perform as they approach the public markets later this year.
Damilare Odedina
