$600 million worth of OpenAI shares have no takers, while buyers with $2 billion in cash are lining up to compete for Anthropic

According to 1M AI News monitoring, OpenAI has just raised $122.0 billion in financing at a $852.0 billion valuation, but the secondary market tells a different story. Ken Smythe, founder of the secondary trading firm Next Round Capital, said that over the past few weeks, about six institutional investors (including hedge funds and venture capital) have found him to sell OpenAI shares totaling about $600 million. Last year, those shares would be snapped up within a few days; now, they’re getting no attention.

“We can’t find any firm among hundreds of institutional investors willing to take them over,” he said. The company has cumulatively facilitated $2.5 billion in transactions. Meanwhile, “buyers have indicated they have $2.0 billion in cash ready to put into Anthropic.”

Augment and Hiive, secondary platforms, also recorded record-breaking demand for Anthropic. Adam Crawley, co-founder of Augment, said that the valuation gap between OpenAI at $852.0 billion and Anthropic at $380.0 billion is driving investors to snap up the latter: “Now is the better risk-reward. People are betting that Anthropic’s valuation will catch up to OpenAI, but near-term returns from buying OpenAI are less clear.” The offers from Next Round and Augment both push Anthropic’s valuation to around $600.0 billion—more than a 50% premium over the prior funding round. Prab Rattan, co-founder of Hiive, said demand for Anthropic on the platform has already exceeded $1.6 billion, also with a premium. Crawley said this demand is “inherently unlimited.”

On the OpenAI side, the buy offers recorded by Next Round correspond to a valuation of about $765.0 billion, roughly a 10% discount versus the prior $850.0 billion. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have started distributing OpenAI shares to their wealth clients and are not charging a carried interest fee (carry), while Goldman Sachs still charges the usual 15%-20% profit share on Anthropic. The logic behind primary-market fundraising and secondary-market trading is not the same: in primary financings, existing shareholders are often invited to participate pro rata to maintain their ownership percentages—rather than refusing (which founders might not want)—it’s better to buy first and then reduce part of the exposure by selling in the secondary market.

Some investors are cautious about OpenAI’s high operating costs. In future years, the company’s committed spending on infrastructure will far exceed Anthropic’s, and consumer-side revenue makes up about 60% of the mix, while enterprise customer expansion is slower. Anthropic has already captured a more profitable enterprise market, and Crawley believes its growth trajectory is therefore stronger. Both companies do not allow investors to trade shares in the secondary market without permission, but through mechanisms such as special-purpose vehicles (SPVs), those shares can still be obtained across multiple platforms. An OpenAI spokesperson responded that the company “has recently established an authorization channel through banks for individuals to participate, with no fees, to counter the high-fee broker model,” and reminded people to “remain highly vigilant against any company claiming to hold OpenAI equity (including through SPVs).”