The tide is turning! OpenAI raised billions in funding, but investors are franticly selling in the secondary market, all in a bet on Anthropic.

OpenAI's shares are gradually falling out of favor in the secondary market, with some even being almost ignored - the reason being that investors are quickly turning to its biggest competitor, Anthropic. While OpenAI has been busy raising hundreds of billions of dollars in funding in recent months, Ken Smythe, founder of Next Round Capital, says that demand for the AI giant's stock in his secondary market is declining. In recent weeks, about six institutional investors - including hedge funds and venture capital firms holding large amounts of shares - contacted his company hoping to sell about $600 million of OpenAI stock. If this were last year, these stocks would have been snapped up in a matter of days. But now, there are no takers. "We can't find any institutional investors willing to take over these shares, and we have relationships with hundreds of institutions," Smythe said. His company has completed transactions totaling $25 billion. Meanwhile, "buyers are saying they have $20 billion in cash and are ready to invest in Anthropic." Other trading platforms, such as Augment and Hiive, have also witnessed unprecedented demand for Anthropic. Adam Crawley, co-founder of Augment, points out that OpenAI is currently valued at $85.2 billion, while Anthropic is only $38 billion, prompting investors to rush to buy Anthropic shares before its valuation further increases. "At the moment, the risk-return profile of investing in Anthropic is clearly better," Crawley said. "People are betting that Anthropic's valuation will eventually catch up to OpenAI. And if you buy OpenAI stock now, the short-term prospects are not as clear." According to regulations, both Anthropic and OpenAI do not allow investors to trade their shares in the secondary market without permission. However, investors can transfer interests through mechanisms like Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), allowing them to still acquire these shares on many platforms. A spokesperson for OpenAI said in an email statement, "People should be very cautious of any company claiming to offer OpenAI shares (including through SPVs). We have recently established official channels for individual investments, such as through banks. We launched this channel without charging any fees, in contrast to brokerage models that charge high intermediary fees." Sources reveal that banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have started offering OpenAI shares to wealth management clients without accompanying equity fees. Goldman Sachs, however, continues to charge equity fees in accordance with conventions for clients interested in investing in Anthropic, usually taking 15% to 20% of the profits. Representatives of the related banks declined to comment. Anthropic did not issue a statement. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced its largest-ever round of financing, raising $122 billion from tech giants, venture capital funds, and retail investors. Primary market financing and secondary market trading do not always follow the same logic. In financing rounds, existing investors usually have the opportunity to increase their stakes to maintain their ownership percentage. To avoid embarrassing the company's founders, they sometimes choose to buy in and then sell some of their shares in the secondary market. Both AI companies have seen rapid growth in recent years, especially after OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022 and Anthropic subsequently launched Claude. Currently, both companies are considering plans to go public, with OpenAI's initial public offering potentially taking place as early as this year. However, some investors are becoming cautious about OpenAI's rising operating costs. The company has promised to invest substantially more than Anthropic in infrastructure to support its AI strategy in the coming years. Crawley's analysis indicates that while OpenAI has a strong consumer base, its pace in capturing more profitable enterprise clients is slow; on the other hand, Anthropic dominates this high-profit market and therefore appears to have a stronger growth trajectory than OpenAI. Of course, Anthropic also faces many challenges. As the Pentagon has identified it as a supply chain risk entity and ordered government entities to refrain from using its technology, the company is currently suing the U.S. Department of Defense. This week, Anthropic experienced a second security incident within a few days, accidentally leaking the internal source code behind Claude. According to Next Round data, the buy offer price in the market for OpenAI corresponds to a valuation of about $76.5 billion, a 10% discount from the previous $85 billion valuation. "The current demand for Anthropic in the market is much greater," said Crawley of Augment. Both his company and Next Round have observed that the buy offer price for Anthropic in the market is quite high, corresponding to a valuation of about $60 billion, over 50% higher than the last funding round. Meanwhile, Prab Rattan, co-founder of Hiive, said that the demand for Anthropic shares registered on the platform has exceeded $1.6 billion, also for premium purchases. "This is one of the strongest demands we have ever seen," Crawley said. "It can be said that the market's appetite for subscription is almost limitless."