Anthropic shares hit $1.5T on secondary market as IPO nears

Because Anthropic remains private, most buyers acquire stock on secondary markets, where existing shares are sold by employees or early investors. Some deals there are legitimate. Others involve high fees and complex ownership structures through special-purpose vehicles, which pool investor funds for a single transaction.

Anthropic declined to comment for this story. The company has become more explicit on its website in warning against unauthorized stock sales and scams.

Some buyers are getting pickier, said Aman Verjee, a general partner at Practical Venture Capital. "Many buyers are now asking for direct cap table exposure," he said. "Demand for nested SPVs with indirect exposure, less reporting rights, or exposure to Anthropic's earlier rounds and common shares is softer, and I'm not seeing a lot of demand at $1.5 trillion for that, but there is some."

Anthropic's secondary valuation has risen even as rivals close the gap. OpenAI's Codex reached 5 million active monthly users in June, and its latest models, GPT-5.6 Terra and the lower-cost GPT-5.6 Luna, have been well received. Chinese startup Moonshot AI has emerged as a cheaper alternative with its Kimi models.

OpenAI has seen a resurgence of interest from secondary buyers this summer, Crawley said. But its price has stayed relatively flat at around the $852 billion valuation from its March funding round, with more supply available.

By contrast, Anthropic's valuation keeps climbing, and Crawley sees way more buyers than sellers. "With an IPO coming soon," he said, "you don't have a lot of willing sellers."