Anthropic is now being priced at roughly $1 trillion on some private secondary markets, according to traders and marketplace executives, marking a dramatic surge that has vaulted the company ahead of OpenAI in private-share demand. The scramble reflects how quickly investor sentiment inside the AI trade has shifted toward scarce Anthropic stock.
A private-market frenzy
Because Anthropic and OpenAI remain private, most outside investors can only gain exposure through secondary markets, where current or former employees and early backers sell stock. Traders say that system has created an intense imbalance: huge demand for Anthropic shares and almost no willing sellers.
On Forge Global, one of the best-known private-market platforms, Anthropic has reportedly hovered around a $1 trillion valuation. Other offers cited by investors and intermediaries put the company above $1 trillion as well, with some buyers reportedly becoming so aggressive they were willing to structure unusual deals just to get access to stock.
Why Anthropic is pulling ahead
The speed of the move is striking. Only three months earlier, Anthropic had closed a funding round at a $380 billion valuation. Since then, investors have been drawn to its rapid revenue growth and momentum around Claude Code, the company's AI-powered coding assistant, which has become a major talking point in venture and secondary-market circles.
“Everybody wants to be part of a generational opportunity in AI, and right now, Anthropic is in the pole position.”
— Glen Anderson, CEO of Rainmaker Securities, as cited in the report
Traders say much of the buying pressure is being driven by fear of missing out as much as by traditional fundamentals. In that environment, the scarcity of available shares becomes a valuation accelerator of its own: when very few holders want to sell, even a small number of urgent buyers can push implied prices sharply higher.
OpenAI's relative cooling
At the same time, secondary-market interest in OpenAI appears to have softened. On Forge Global, OpenAI was reportedly trading around $880 billion, only modestly above its most recent funding round and below the froth surrounding Anthropic. That does not necessarily signal weakness in OpenAI itself, but it does suggest that momentum investors currently see Anthropic as the hotter name.
The contrast is notable because OpenAI's last primary-market valuation was far larger than Anthropic's. Yet in private-share trading, where scarcity, narrative, and urgency can matter as much as formal round pricing, Anthropic has briefly become the market's most coveted AI asset.