Anthropic has emerged as the most coveted asset on the private secondary market, eclipsing rivals like OpenAI as institutional appetite shifts. Glen Anderson, president of the investment bank Rainmaker Securities, reports that the firm is finding it increasingly difficult to source shares of the AI startup because existing investors are holding tight.
“The hardest stock to source in our marketplace is Anthropic,” Anderson told TechCrunch. “There’s just no sellers.”
This trend represents a notable pivot in investor sentiment. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that while buyers are lining up to pour $2 billion into Anthropic, roughly $600 million worth of OpenAI shares are sitting on the market with no takers. 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 been brokering private shares since 2010, views the current climate 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 clash with the Department of Defense. Although 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 monitoring the potential impact 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.
