Secondary share trading platforms are pricing Anthropic at approximately $1 trillion, just three months after its primary fundraising round valued it at $380 billion. OpenAI is trading at $880 billion on the same platforms, a meaningful reversal of the previous order. The valuations are not primary rounds and carry no guarantee of liquidity.
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI company founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei, has reached an implied valuation of approximately $1 trillion on secondary share trading platforms, according to Business Insider, overtaking OpenAI which is trading at approximately $880 billion on the same venues.
Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge Global, one of the leading private-company share trading platforms, told Business Insider the valuation was “hovering around the $1 trillion mark.”
The development arrives without a primary fundraising round or press release: it reflects what buyers on secondary markets are willing to pay for existing shares from current or former employees and early investors.
The speed of the appreciation is striking. Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G funding round, led by GIC and Coatue, in February 2026 at a primary valuation of $380 billion. Three months later, secondary markets are pricing the company at more than two and a half times that figure.
The driver, according to market participants cited by Business Insider, is a combination of revenue acceleration and a supply-demand imbalance in Anthropic’s shares.
Glen Anderson of Rainmaker Securities told Business Insider he had just been offered the opportunity to buy Anthropic shares at a valuation of $960 billion and that a month earlier such a figure would have been “unthinkable”, but that the shares were being snapped up by competing buyers within hours.
One of Anthropic’s shareholders had expressed willingness to sell at an implied valuation of $1.15 trillion, according to Ken Sawyer, co-founder of Saints Capital.
The revenue trajectory behind the valuations is extraordinary on its own terms. Anthropic’s annualised revenue run rate was approximately $9 billion at the end of 2025; by March 2026 it had reached $30 billion.
That is a 233% increase in one quarter, driven primarily by enterprise adoption of Claude Code and the company’s broader API and enterprise products. Reuters confirmed Anthropic had not yet agreed a new primary round, having reportedly resisted overtures from venture capital investors for a new fundraise, according to Bloomberg.
The demand is therefore being channelled into the secondary market, where buyers must acquire shares from existing holders rather than from the company directly.
The OpenAI comparison is the other side of the story. On Forge Global, OpenAI trades at approximately $880 billion, just 3% above the $852 billion primary valuation from its early-2026 fundraising round.
According to Caplight, an analytics platform that tracks private-market share activity, the ratio of sellers to buyers in OpenAI shares was five-to-one in Q1 2026, a reversal from the end of 2025, when buyers were dominating sellers. Glen Anderson described interest in OpenAI shares as “tepid” this year, with bids often below the company’s last primary valuation.
Jesse Leimgruber, founder of AI startup OpenHome and a holder of secondary Anthropic shares, told Business Insider that one “very prominent growth fund” had offered to buy Anthropic shares at a $1.05 trillion implied valuation.
Secondary market valuations are categorically different from primary fundraising rounds. They reflect what a buyer is willing to pay for illiquid, minority shares with no guarantee of liquidity, no board rights, and no ability to force a sale or IPO.
A secondary price of $1 trillion does not mean Anthropic could raise $1 trillion in a primary round, nor that a future IPO would be priced at that level.
The Business Insider article itself noted reports of “feverish demand” and buyers offering homes as collateral for Anthropic shares, language that describes speculative intensity rather than fundamental valuation. Anthropic is reportedly exploring an IPO as early as late 2026.
