Buyers scooping up coveted Anthropic shares have vaulted the AI giant’s valuation on some trading platforms to $1 trillion – eclipsing OpenAI’s market capitalization by over $100 billion in a sea change in the AI race. 

The investor scramble has ratcheted up in recent weeks, tech financiers told The Post – at the same time demand for OpenAI shares is sagging. 

The valuation run-up is playing out on so-called secondary markets, where shares of still-private companies are traded, and comes ahead of expected initial public offerings from the artificial intelligence giants that would shower shareholders with returns. 

Hype around Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Mythos, may have contributed to the spike in valuation. The company itself has warned that the tech, designed to unearth cyber threats, is too dangerous to be released widely — a stance some view as a canny publicity move.

Anthropic has also seen huge revenue growth, from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to over $30 billion by the end of March. The company credited widespread adoption of its commercially available Claude services for the surge.

CEO Dario Amodei’s public feud about safety protocols with the Trump administration — which recently blacklisted the company from working with the Pentagon — appears to have had little effect on traders. The exec reportedly met with White House officials last week, part of efforts to lower tensions.

Meanwhile, demand for OpenAI shares is reportedly flagging. Institutional investors seeking to sell $600 million of the company’s shares couldn’t find buyers as of the end of March, according to Bloomberg News. That’s even as OpenAI wrapped up its biggest-ever fundraising round from other tech companies — drawing $122 billion.

Anthropic overtaking OpenAI’s valuation “says more about the quality of what Anthropic has delivered to its enterprise clients than anything else,” Mike Sobel, president and co-founder of secondary trading firm Scenic Advisement, told The Post.

“The quality of Anthropic’s earnings are just better,” he added.

Private stock marketplace Hiive told The Post that the price for Anthropic shares has surged 211% to roughly $900 over the past three months, becoming one of the most actively traded companies on its platform.

Shares of OpenAI have risen just 8.5% to $608 over the same period, according to Hiive’s data.

While valuations of private companies in between funding rounds can be tricky to calculate, info on Hiive points to a $1 trillion valuation for Anthropic.

OpenAI’s share price has remained roughly in line with its $852 billion valuation from its most recent funding round. 

“Rumors of strong revenue performance in Q1 appear to be pushing the valuation higher,” said Hiive CEO Sim Desai, noting Anthropic’s recent price jump is 10 times Hiive’s index of its 50 most liquid pre-IPO securities. “We’ve seen sharp price acceleration in recent weeks.”

Sobel scooped up a slice of Anthropic shares in 2024 at a $19 billion valuation as part of FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings after the Sam Bankman-Fried-led crypto exchange imploded. The position – which accounts for roughly 9% of Scenic Advisement’s portfolio – could return 20 times Sobel’s initial investment if Anthropic keeps trading around $1 trillion by the time it holds an IPO.

There’s no known date from an IPO from either Anthropic or OpenAI. The Post has sought comment from both companies.

Sobel said he has no intention of selling his shares of Anthropic, which he called a “generational company.” 

“Everyday I’m getting calls from people wanting to buy my Anthropic shares,” he told The Post.

“I had billionaire family offices call me desperately wanting to buy a couple million dollars of shares virtually at any price. I mean, within reason. Everyone is seriously chasing this,”

The fervor for Anthropic shares has led to some unusual offers.

One Silicon Valley dealmaker proposed swapping his 14-acre estate for Anthropic shares, The Post reported. Storm Duncan, the founder of tech-focused investment bank Ignatious, remarked that agreeing on a valuation for the AI darling could be tricky given how it seems to be shooting up daily.

Meanwhile, Jesse Leimgruber, founder of San Francisco AI hardware startup OpenHome, wrote this week on X that a “very well known growth fund” offered to buy Anthropic shares at a $1.05 trillion valuation. He called the bid “absolutely wild.”

One Anthropic shareholder recently offered to unload shares at a $1.15 trillion valuation, Ken Sawyer, cofounder and managing partner at Saints Capital, a venture secondary firm, told Business Insider.

“It’s been an epic run for Anthropic,” Glen Anderson, CEO of fintech company Rainmaker Securities, told Business Insider. “Everybody wants to be part of a generational opportunity in AI, and right now, Anthropic is in the pole position.” Anderson said he received an offer to buy Anthropic shares valued at $960 billion, an unthinkable price even just weeks ago. 

“We get an offer, and then within a day someone else has already bought it,” he told the outlet. “There are almost no sellers.”