OpenAI's stock has reportedly fallen out of favor on the secondary market, becoming almost unsaleable in some cases, while investors have quickly turned to its biggest rival, Anthropic. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to relevant reports shared by netizens on social platforms and commented: "No surprise."
According to reports, Anthropic has become a hot company in the field of artificial intelligence investment, and its stock trading demand in the secondary market has reached a record high, while OpenAI has struggled to find buyers. Many institutional investors are preparing to invest billions of dollars in cash to buy Anthropic stock, which is in sharp contrast to OpenAI's recent difficulty in selling about $600 million in shares.
This shift in investor sentiment is remarkable. Ken Smit, founder of Next Round Capital, revealed that despite contacting hundreds of institutional investors, they have not been able to find any willing buyers for OpenAI shares in recent weeks. Last year, such shares would sell out within days, but now no one has shown interest, even at a discounted valuation of $765 billion, down 10% from the previous $850 billion.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is riding a wave of enthusiasm. Bidding offers on platforms such as Next Round and Augment have valued the company at about $600 billion, an increase of more than 50% from its previous funding round. Another trading platform, Hiive, also received more than $1.6 billion in demand for Anthropic shares at a similar premium. Hiive co-founder Prab Rattan said the demand is one of the highest ever.
Risk-reward considerations appear to be the main reason for this divergence. Augment co-founder Adam Crawley pointed out that Anthropic’s $380 billion valuation compared to OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation means greater upside potential. "People are betting that Anthropic's valuation will eventually catch up to OpenAI," Crawley said, adding that short-term returns on OpenAI stock appear less certain.
Operational factors also come into play. OpenAI's massive investment in infrastructure to achieve its artificial intelligence goals has raised concerns, especially since it has been unsuccessful in attracting highly profitable enterprise customers. In contrast, Anthropic has dominated this lucrative segment, bolstering its growth prospects.
Banks also reflect this difference in their product pricing strategies. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have waived commissions for promoting OpenAI shares to high-net-worth clients, while Goldman Sachs has maintained its standard commission of 15% to 20% on Anthropic shares, a sign of its confidence in the latter's profitability.
However, Anthropic is not without its difficulties. The company is in litigation with the U.S. Department of Defense over a supply chain risk designation that bars the government from using its technology. Additionally, a second security breach this week resulted in the accidental leakage of internal source code for its Claude model.
Even so, investor enthusiasm has not diminished. OpenAI may have just completed a record $122 billion in financing, but Anthropic’s strong momentum in the secondary market cannot be ignored, and the bidding reflects the narrowing valuation gap between the two.