Anthropic’s private-market valuation has reached as much as $1.5 trillion on secondary markets, first reported by Businessinsider. Shares are difficult to obtain as investors position themselves ahead of the company’s expected public-market debut in the next few months, while Anthropic has filed paperwork to go public and existing stock changes hands through secondary markets.
Three secondary traders put that figure 25% above its level a month earlier. Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion in a funding round announced in May. Anthropic’s private-market picture now combines a secondary valuation as high as $1.5 trillion with few willing sellers.
Because Anthropic remains private, the vast majority of investors buy on secondary markets, where employees or early investors sell existing stock. Some deals are legitimate, while others have involved suspect arrangements with high fees and complex ownership structures built as special-purpose vehicles, or SPVs, that pool investor funds for a single, one-off deal.
Anthropic filed paperwork to go public in June, with an expected public-market debut in the next few months. Adam Crawley, president of Augment, said investors are trying to position themselves ahead of the IPO, while Glen Anderson, CEO of Rainmaker Securities, said the few sellers on his books are around the $1.5 trillion valuation.
Anthropic’s website has become more explicit in warning against unauthorized stock sales and scams. Aman Verjee, a general partner at Practical Venture Capital, said some buyers have heeded those warnings and become more choosy.
Verjee said many buyers are asking for direct cap-table exposure, while demand is softer for nested SPVs with indirect exposure, fewer reporting rights, or exposure to Anthropic’s earlier rounds and common shares.
Anthropic’s secondary valuation has continued to climb while competitors close the gap. OpenAI’s answer to Claude Code, Codex, reached 5 million active monthly users in June, and the company’s latest models, GPT-5.6 Terra and lower-cost GPT-5.6 Luna, have been well received.
China’s Moonshot AI has emerged as a more serious threat, with its Kimi models gaining traction as a far cheaper alternative. OpenAI has seen a resurgence of interest from secondary buyers this summer, but Crawley said its price has stayed relatively flat, hovering around the $852 billion valuation of the funding round it closed in March, with more supply.
By contrast, Crawley is seeing far more buyers than sellers for Anthropic ahead of the IPO.