Anthropic Hits $1 Trillion Valuation on Secondary Markets, Overtaking OpenAI

Anthropic's private shares are now trading at roughly $1 trillion on secondary markets — surpassing OpenAI's implied valuation for the first time. The milestone signals a fundamental shift in how institutional investors are pricing the AI race.

Background: how secondary valuations work

Private companies don't have public stock prices. But shares held by employees, early investors, and other insiders can be sold on secondary marketplaces — platforms like Forge Global and Augment that connect sellers with accredited buyers. The prices that clear on these platforms form an implied valuation: multiply the per-share price by total shares outstanding and you get a rough market cap. These valuations are real transactions, but they reflect a thin slice of shares and carry more uncertainty than a primary fundraising round or IPO.

The numbers

According to The Next Web, Anthropic shares are trading at prices that imply a valuation near $1 trillion, while OpenAI is trading in the $850–880 billion range on the same platforms.

The milestone arrived without a primary funding round — no new capital raise, no press release from Anthropic. It reflects where buyers and sellers are willing to transact today.

Underlying the jump is a dramatic revenue surge:

• End of 2025: Annualized revenue approximately $9 billion
• March 2026: Annualized revenue approximately $30 billion
• Change: A 233% increase in roughly one quarter

That growth trajectory is what's driving secondary buyers to pay premium prices. Investors are pricing in continued acceleration, not just current revenue.

What's driving the revenue?

The primary catalyst cited is enterprise adoption of Claude Code — Anthropic's AI coding assistant built on the Claude model family. The number of businesses spending more than $1 million annually with Anthropic has doubled to more than 1,000 clients.

That's the kind of metric that changes how investors think about a company. It's not just user counts or API calls — it's large enterprises writing seven-figure checks and renewing them. Enterprise contracts at that scale tend to be sticky: once a company has embedded a tool into its development workflow, switching costs are high.

Claude Code competes directly with GitHub Copilot (Microsoft/OpenAI) and Google's Gemini Code Assist, among others. The revenue data suggests Anthropic has moved from a research-first reputation into a commercially dominant position in at least one high-value segment.

What this means for the AI industry

A few implications worth noting:

• The AI valuation race is not over — and it's not a two-horse race between OpenAI and everyone else. Anthropic is now priced above OpenAI by secondary market participants, a fact that would have seemed improbable 18 months ago.
• Enterprise AI spend is real. 1,000+ companies spending $1M+ annually is a significant anchor. These aren't pilot programs — they're production deployments.
• The next funding round will be closely watched. Secondary market valuations often set a floor for primary rounds. If Anthropic raises next at or above $1 trillion, it would likely be the largest private fundraise in history for a non-energy company.

It's worth noting what secondary market valuations do not tell us: profitability, cash burn, or whether the revenue growth rate will sustain. Anthropic has not disclosed net income figures. The $30 billion annualized revenue is remarkable, but the cost structure of training and operating frontier AI models is also extraordinary.

What to watch

Watch for whether Anthropic announces a primary fundraising round in the next two quarters — the secondary valuation creates both an opportunity and pressure to lock in capital at favorable terms. Also watch OpenAI's response: its own revenue trajectory and enterprise metrics will determine whether the gap narrows or widens.

Source: The Next Web