Shares of OpenAI are gradually falling out of favor in the secondary market, with some equity stakes even nearing a state of negligible interest — a trend attributed to investors rapidly pivoting toward its main competitor, Anthropic.
While OpenAI has been busy raising tens of billions of dollars in funding over the past few months, Ken Smythe, founder of Next Round Capital, stated that demand for shares of the artificial intelligence (AI) giant on the secondary market where he operates is declining. In recent weeks, about six institutional investors—including hedge funds and venture capital firms holding significant stakes—have contacted his firm looking to sell approximately $600 million worth of OpenAI shares.
If this had happened last year, these shares would have been snapped up within days. But now, there are no takers.
"We simply can't find any institutional investors willing to take these shares, and we have access to hundreds of institutions," Smythe said. His firm has completed transactions totaling $2.5 billion. Meanwhile, "buyers indicated they have $2 billion in cash ready to invest in Anthropic."
Other trading platforms, such as Augment and Hiive, have also witnessed unprecedented demand for Anthropic. Adam Crawley, co-founder of Augment, pointed out that OpenAI's current valuation stands at $852 billion, while Anthropic's is only $380 billion. This significant gap is driving investors to purchase Anthropic shares before its valuation rises further.
"At present, the risk-reward ratio of investing in Anthropic is clearly more favorable," Crawley said. "People are betting that Anthropic's valuation will eventually catch up with OpenAI's. And if you buy OpenAI shares now, the short-term profit prospects aren't as clear."
According to regulations, both Anthropic and OpenAI prohibit investors from trading their shares on the secondary market without permission. However, investors can still transfer ownership through mechanisms such as special purpose vehicles (SPVs), making these shares available on many platforms.
An OpenAI spokesperson stated in an email: "People should remain highly cautious of any company claiming to offer OpenAI equity (including through SPV methods). We recently established an official authorized individual investment channel, such as investing through banks. We launched this channel without charging any fees to differentiate it from broker models that charge high intermediary fees."
According to sources familiar with the matter, banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have started offering OpenAI shares to their wealth management clients without charging carried interest fees. However, Goldman Sachs continues to charge carried interest fees for clients interested in investing in Anthropic, typically amounting to 15% to 20% of profits.
Representatives from the relevant banks declined to comment. Anthropic also did not issue a statement.
On Tuesday this week, OpenAI announced that its largest-ever funding round had concluded, raising $122 billion from tech giants, venture capital funds, and retail investors.
Financing in the primary market and trading in the secondary market do not always follow the same logic. During financing rounds, existing investors are typically given the opportunity to increase their holdings to maintain their ownership percentage. To avoid embarrassing the company's founding team, they sometimes choose to buy in and then sell a portion of their shares on the secondary market.
In recent years, both AI companies have experienced rapid growth, particularly after OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022 and Anthropic subsequently introduced Claude. Currently, both companies are considering going public, with OpenAI’s initial public offering expected as early as this year.
However, some investors are beginning to adopt a cautious stance toward OpenAI’s continuously rising operational costs. The company has committed to investing significantly more than Anthropic in infrastructure over the coming years to support its AI strategy. Crawley noted that while OpenAI boasts a strong consumer base, it has been slow in capturing the more profitable enterprise clients; in contrast, Anthropic dominates this high-margin market, resulting in a growth trajectory that appears stronger than OpenAI’s.
Of course, Anthropic also faces numerous challenges. The company is suing the U.S. Department of Defense after the Pentagon classified it as a supply chain risk entity and ordered government entities to stop using its technology. Just this week, Anthropic experienced its second security incident within days, accidentally leaking the internal source code behind Claude.
According to Next Round data, the current market valuation for OpenAI based on buy offers stands at approximately $765 billion, representing a 10% discount from the previous $850 billion.
“The demand for Anthropic is much higher at present,” said Crawley of Augment.
Both his firm and Next Round have observed that the buy offers for Anthropic are quite high, with valuations reaching around $600 billion, exceeding the previous funding round by more than 50%. Meanwhile, Prab Rattan, co-founder of Hiive, stated that the platform has registered demand for Anthropic shares surpassing $1.6 billion, all at a premium.
“This is one of the strongest demands we’ve ever seen,” Crawley remarked. “It could be said that there is virtually no limit to market subscription interest.”
Editor/Melody