As Anthropic rises rapidly and gains traction in enterprise customers, some existing investors in OpenAI are beginning to doubt the company's $852 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times. OpenAI is stepping up its efforts to shift its business focus to enterprise customers in response to competitive pressure from Anthropic, but the market is not unanimous on whether this transformation can support existing valuations.
The report pointed out that Anthropic’s annualized revenue has jumped significantly in a short period of time: from US$9 billion at the end of 2025 to US$30 billion at the end of March this year, mainly driven by the surge in demand for its coding tools for developers and enterprise customers. An investor who has invested in both companies told the Financial Times that finding a "reasonable" logic for OpenAI's latest round of financing almost requires assuming a future IPO valuation of at least US$1.2 trillion, which also makes Anthropic's current valuation of about US$380 billion look more attractive by comparison.
This valuation divergence is also reflected in the secondary market beyond the primary market: investor demand for Anthropic shares is currently almost "insatiable", while OpenAI shares are starting to trade at a discount. Feedback from relevant secondary market platforms shows that Anthropic’s quota is in short supply, while OpenAI’s liquidity and demand are significantly less than the former.
OpenAI management has tried to fight back against questions about its valuation and prospects. OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar emphasized to the Financial Times that the company’s recently completed $122 billion financing—the largest private equity financing transaction in history—in itself shows that the capital market still maintains strong confidence in OpenAI. However, not all observers were convinced. Jai Das, president of the investment firm Sapphire Ventures (who does not hold shares in either company), said in an interview with the Financial Times that he compared OpenAI to "Netscape in AI" - the name that once dominated the browser, was eventually surpassed by Microsoft and acquired by AOL, is regarded as a metaphor for OpenAI's possible disruptive fate.
The report also mentioned that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is no stranger to such high valuation pressures and market swings. During his time leading startup accelerator Y Combinator, aggressive valuation push-ups left some startups in trouble at later stages of funding, while a few did live up to the promise of high early valuations. Today, in the context of increasingly fierce competition in generative AI and increasingly high valuations of leading companies, the valuation game surrounding OpenAI and Anthropic is seen as the reappearance of this historical mirror in a new cycle.