In a move that few saw coming so quickly, Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in market capitalization on secondary trading platforms. According to Business Insider, buyers are scooping up Anthropic shares at prices that vault the company’s valuation to a staggering $1 trillion. This way, Anthropic surpasses OpenAI’s valuation by more than $100 billion.
This scenario is the product of a massive surge in investor AI demand. Institutional investors are struggling to find buyers for $600 million worth of OpenAI shares. Meanwhile, the market for Anthropic is more like a bidding war. Private stock exchanges like Hiive say that Anthropic’s share price has gone up 211% in just three months. In the same time period, OpenAI’s share price has only gone up 8.5%.
Anthropic flipped the AI power map with $1 Trillion valuation in secondary markets
All of this is mostly due to a combination of the momentum and revenue. Anthropic’s annualized run rate is $9 billion at the end of 2025. However, the figure for March 2026 was more than $30 billion. This is thanks to the rapid adoption of “Claude Code” and enterprise services.
The “scarcity factor” is also a main cause here. Unlike OpenAI, where more insiders are looking to sell, Anthropic employees and early investors are holding onto their stakes. When supply is low and demand is high, prices move fast. Investors are so desperate to get in that someone has even offered to swap their 14-acre estates for a slice of the company—a level of FOMO that Glen Anderson, CEO of Rainmaker Securities, calls a “generational opportunity.”
Reality check: Primary vs. secondary markets
It is important to distinguish between “actual” valuation and secondary market sentiment. Anthropic’s last official funding round in February 2026 valued the company at $380 billion. The $1 trillion figure reflects what outside buyers are willing to pay for minority stakes on platforms like Forge Global.
Essentially, investors are paying a premium of nearly three times the company’s last official valuation just to be part of the story. While OpenAI is trading at a price very close to its $852 billion funding round, Anthropic is benefiting from a massive speculative wave. Reports suggest Anthropic is already working with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan on a potential IPO as early as late 2026. For this, they target a more conservative public valuation in the $400 billion to $500 billion range.
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