Three months ago, Anthropic closed a Series G funding round at a valuation of $380 billion. At the time, that sounded like an astronomical figure. Today, it looks almost like a bargain.
The company's value on secondary markets has surpassed one trillion dollars. Forge Global, one of the leading private trading platforms in the US, valued Anthropic at precisely this threshold. CEO Kelly Rodriques confirmed it directly in an interview with Business Insider. And the figure is similar on the blockchain.
Anthropic and its shares
Jupiter, a decentralized exchange built on the Solana blockchain, trades pre-IPO instruments backed by direct exposure through special investment vehicles. It is there that since last October, Anthropic's value has surged by 733%. Michael Geike, co-founder and CEO of Advanced Blockchain AG, was among the first to publicly draw attention to this fact.
Hiive, another platform for accredited investors, values Anthropic shares at $849 apiece, corresponding to a market capitalization of around $851 billion. Still below one trillion, but in the same ballpark.
OpenAI entered this year with a valuation of $852 billion from its latest funding round. It is now trading at roughly $880 billion on Forge Global. Anthropic has overtaken it. Almost no one expected this reversal just a few weeks ago. Glen Anderson, CEO of Rainmaker Securities, which specializes in private securities, does not describe it as a rational market move. "It's been an epic run for Anthropic. Everyone wants to be part of a generational opportunity in artificial intelligence, and Anthropic is now leading the way."
Conversely, traders who spoke with Business Insider report waning interest in OpenAI shares. Offers are below the level of its latest funding round, and sentiment has shifted.
No sellers, and buyers are desperate
Those who own Anthropic shares are not selling them. Or at least not cheaply. Bradley Horowitz, general partner at Wisdom Ventures, which invested in both companies, says: "We receive daily offers ranging from absurd to serious. I barely open them. We're playing the long game." One shareholder offered to sell shares at a valuation of $1.15 trillion. A renowned growth fund offered to buy at $1.05 trillion. Jesse Leimgruber, founder of OpenHome, commented on X with just two words: "Absolutely insane."
And then there are creative solutions. Some prospective buyers are offering to exchange their own homes for Anthropic shares at a valuation of more than $800 billion. Anderson received offers to buy at $960 billion. Before he could evaluate them, they were gone. "We get an offer, and by the next day someone else has bought it. There are almost no sellers."
Why is there suddenly so much interest?
The numbers are truly staggering. Anthropic's annual revenue has reached $14 billion, growing more than tenfold in each of the past three years. The company has existed as a commercial entity for only three years. The team itself stated: "We earned our first dollar, and today our annual revenue stands at $14 billion, having grown more than tenfold every year."
Claude Code, an AI-powered programming assistant, plays a major role. Much of the excitement centers around it. Developers are adopting it rapidly, and companies are testing production deployments.
Google plans to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic, with the first $10 billion invested at the current valuation and the remainder tied to meeting performance targets.
Third member of an exclusive club
Anthropic has become the third private company in the trillion-dollar club, alongside OpenAI and SpaceX. The combined implied market capitalization of these three companies has surpassed $3.7 trillion. For comparison, Walmart only this year became the first retail chain with a market capitalization exceeding one trillion dollars. Meanwhile, SpaceX has filed a confidential registration for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The market expects the company to go public in June. Prediction market Kalshi gives a 59% probability that Anthropic will go public this year.
The race to see which company will be listed first is in full swing.
Sources: tradersunion.com, beincrypto.com, and finance.yahoo.com
