Anthropic has become the most sought-after asset in the private secondary market, overshadowing competitors like OpenAI as institutional interest shifts. Glen Anderson, president of the investment bank Rainmaker Securities, reports that the firm now struggles to find shares of the AI startup because current investors are refusing to sell.
“The hardest stock to source in our marketplace is Anthropic,” Anderson told TechCrunch. “There’s just no sellers.”
This trend marks a significant shift in investor sentiment. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that while buyers have signaled an interest in deploying $2 billion into Anthropic, roughly $600 million worth of OpenAI shares remain on the market without finding buyers. Ken Smythe, founder and CEO of Next Round Capital, confirmed this imbalance to Bloomberg, noting that demand for OpenAI has cooled significantly.
Anderson, who has brokered private shares since 2010, views the current activity as a unique moment for the secondary market. He manages transactions for roughly 1,000 different stocks and notes that the pool of institutional investors in this space has exploded from a handful of firms to thousands.
The impact of the Pentagon standoff
Analysts point to a surprising catalyst for Anthropic’s current popularity: its recent public dispute with the Department of Defense. While the military body labeled the company a supply chain risk earlier this year, Anderson argues the standoff inadvertently boosted the company's profile rather than hindering it.
Investors are now closely watching the potential influence of a looming IPO from SpaceX. While Anthropic currently holds the spotlight in private trading, industry analysts expect that a public offering from Elon Musk’s aerospace company could fundamentally reshape the landscape for private equity and liquidity across the tech sector.
