Investors lined up for Anthropic shares, offering a valuation of $800 billion

Anthropic, the market leader in corporate AI tools, is facing a surge of investment offers that imply a valuation of its business almost like that of OpenAI. Although the startup has so far refused to sell shares, its value on OTC exchanges has already approached the $700 billion mark ahead of its expected IPO in the fall. Venture capitalists are offering Anthropic a new round of funding, which could result in the AI company getting a valuation of about $800 billion or higher, Bloomberg found out.

Anthropic has received several equity offers from venture capitalists in recent weeks, estimating that the Claude developer's business is already worth $800 billion or even higher, sources tell Business Insider (BI) and Bloomberg. That figure is more than double the startup's valuation at its last funding round in February 2026 - $380 billion. However, Anthropic's management has so far rejected offers for a new investment, Bloomberg's sources said. On the Caplight platform, where non-public companies' shares can be traded, Anthropic's value has soared 75% over the past three months and now stands at $688 billion, BI points out.

Investor excitement is being driven by the company's rapid revenue growth and the high growth of AI assistant for programmers Claude Code, BI notes. Anthropic has launched a series of AI tools aimed at fundamentally changing how businesses solve problems, from code writing to cybersecurity. These products are resonating with a growing base of enterprise customers, leading to a surge in revenue and tougher competition from OpenAI, Bloomberg writes.

While investors on the OTC market are eager to buy Anthropic securities, their interest in OpenAI has fallen, Bloomberg wrote in early April. Ken Smith, head of the firm's Next Round Capital, told the agency at the time that he had been unable to find buyers for OpenAI shares among his hundreds of institutional clients for weeks. Instead, he said, clients have expressed a willingness to put up about $2 billion to buy stakes in Anthropic.

In January-March 2026, there were five times more people willing to sell OpenAI securities than those who were ready to buy them, Caplight reported on April 14. The situation has changed markedly since the end of 2025 - then, on the contrary, buyers prevailed, noted in its quarterly review of the OTC securities market.

Both startups are preparing to go public in the fall of 2026 and prohibit the resale of their shares without official consent. Nevertheless, access to these securities remains available on many secondary platforms. According to Augment co-founder Adam Crowley, the difference in value between OpenAI ($852 billion) and Anthropic encourages investors to actively buy shares of the latter in anticipation of their future growth.

Seeking Alpha analysts in early April urged investors to be cautious ahead of the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs. Chris Demuth Jr. thinks Anthropic's valuation looks "somewhat more reasonable." Both developers are now "in favor with investors," but their securities have already become "quite expensive," he warned. Jonathan Weber also finds Anthropic "more attractive right now". He believes the startup's focus on AI programming solutions forms a "unique selling proposition", while backing from Alphabet and Amazon reduces risk.

Julia Ostian advises investors not to rush to buy shares at the IPO: both AI startups are already too expensive, she believes. For example, OpenAI's business valuation exceeds its annual revenue by more than 35 times, which the expert called "an insane level for a deeply unprofitable company." "I see Anthropic as a much more interesting bet, but I can't say that any of these companies are really good investments at this point," she summarized.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor