Valuation flashing red? OpenAI stock struggling in the resale market as demand shifts to Anthropic

Cailianpress April 2 News (Editor: Shi Zhengcheng) Just as the U.S. startup star OpenAI completed a massive $122 billion fundraising this week, bringing its valuation to $852 billion (about RMB 5.85 trillion), a piece of news has cast a shadow over this high number.

The founder of NextRound Capital, a private equity secondary trading market, Ken Smythe, told the media on Wednesday that in the market they operate, demand for OpenAI stock is falling. In recent weeks, multiple hedge funds and venture capital firms holding large stakes have reached out to them, seeking to sell OpenAI shares worth about $6 billion.

If this kind of situation happened last year, those shares would have been snapped up within days, but now buyers have changed their thinking.

Ken Smythe said, “In fact, among the hundreds of institutional investors we’ve spoken with, we can’t find anyone willing to take over these shares.”

These investors also told Ken that if OpenAI competitor Anthropic shares are listed, they are ready with $2 billion in cash.

This situation has also appeared among top wealth management firms on Wall Street. According to people familiar with the matter, including banks such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, they have started offering OpenAI shares to affluent clients without charging performance fees. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs still charges performance fees as usual for clients who intend to invest in Anthropic; this fee is typically about 15% to 20% of profits.

Although both OpenAI and Anthropic do not allow investors to trade shares in the secondary market without their permission, many investors can still sell their equity through other mechanisms such as special purpose vehicles. At the same time, investors in the primary market are often given the opportunity in subsequent funding rounds to subscribe for additional shares to maintain their ownership percentage, rather than directly declining (which may offend those star companies); they can also participate in the subscription first, and then sell part of their position in the secondary market.

This also gives the covert “private company secondary market” a certain reference value.

Adam Crawley, co-founder of another trading platform Augment, said that the gap between OpenAI’s valuation of up to $852 billion and Anthropic’s $380 billion is prompting investors to scramble to buy shares in Anthropic.

He commented, “People are betting that Anthropic’s valuation will catch up to OpenAI. But if you buy shares of OpenAI, the short-term returns are not very clear.”

Crawley also pointed out that, from an operational perspective, OpenAI claims it has a strong consumer base, but moves slowly in winning more profitable enterprise customers. Meanwhile, Anthropic holds a dominant position in the enterprise market with higher profits, so its growth trajectory looks stronger than OpenAI’s.

Based on current market rumors, Anthropic executives have discussed the possibility of listing in this year’s fourth quarter. At the same time, although OpenAI, which has just completed a $100 billion-plus fundraising, is not short on money in the short term, it also wants to outpace (earlier than) Anthropic on the matter of going public.

Currently on the NextRound platform, the bid for OpenAI equity corresponds to a valuation of about $76.5 billion, a discount of roughly 10% versus the latest fundraising valuation. Meanwhile, both Augment and the NextRound platforms have received a large number of bids for Anthropic, with valuations of around $600 billion, which is nearly 58% higher than its previous funding round.

Crawley lamented, “This level of demand is one of the highest we’ve ever seen—basically, the interest is endless.”

(Cailianpress Shi Zhengcheng)