Anthropic shares are changing hands at an implied valuation of $1.2 trillion on secondary trading platforms, according to Business Insider. That puts the maker of Claude ahead of OpenAI, whose shares trade at roughly $908 billion on the same platforms. The number represents a 550% year-over-year increase.

The figure is remarkable. It is also misleading.

Built on Scarcity, Not Consensus

Secondary markets only produce prices when employees or early investors sell shares. Right now, almost nobody is selling. “Anthropic is the most sought-after company the venture secondary market has ever seen,” Javier Avalos, cofounder and CEO of Caplight, told Business Insider. Glen Anderson of Rainmaker Securities confirmed deals at the same valuation level but noted they rarely close because, as The Next Web reported, “no one’s selling.”

The demand-supply imbalance has produced behavior that looks more like real estate speculation than equity investing. Some buyers have reportedly offered to swap homes for Anthropic stock. Brokers see roughly five buyers chasing Anthropic for every two after OpenAI.

Three months ago, Business Insider reported Anthropic had crossed the $1 trillion mark on secondary markets. The company’s last primary round, a Series H in May, priced it at $965 billion. The gap between the primary round price and the secondary market price has widened by $235 billion in two months.

The SPV Problem

Most trades route through special-purpose vehicles, which pool capital from several buyers into a single position. Anthropic has publicly distanced itself from these structures. Its website warns investors to assume any indirect route into its stock is invalid, and it has grown increasingly vocal about scams.

The warning has changed nothing. Buyers continue piling into the SPVs the company openly rejects, paying steep fees and accepting byzantine ownership structures. This creates a strange dynamic: the company whose stock is being traded has no control over, and no endorsement of, the market setting its price.

Revenue Versus Reflexivity

Even Anthropic’s early backers treat the number carefully. Matt Murphy of Menlo Ventures, one of the company’s first investors, calls secondary valuations a “noisy signal,” according to The Next Web. He does concede that Anthropic’s revenue has run “crazy above” its own plan.

Revenue performance matters, but it is not what is driving the $1.2 trillion number. What is driving it is a reflexive loop: scarcity pushes prices up, rising prices make holders less willing to sell, reduced supply pushes prices higher. The loop continues until something breaks it.

That something is an IPO.

The IPO Correction Window

Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO in June, with a listing expected within months. A public offering would flood the market with shares, converting a scarcity-driven private valuation into a liquidity-tested public one. Every employee grant, every early investor position, and every fund allocation becomes available for sale at whatever price the broad market will bear.

History suggests caution. Private market valuations built on scarcity premiums rarely survive first contact with public markets intact. The mechanics are straightforward: when the constraint that inflated the price (limited share supply) disappears (via IPO), the price discovers a new equilibrium. That equilibrium can be higher, lower, or roughly the same, but it will be set by millions of participants, not a handful of desperate buyers on secondary platforms.

What This Price Actually Signals

Strip away the scarcity premium and two things remain. First, Anthropic’s business is outperforming its own projections. Murphy’s comment about revenue running “crazy above” plan, combined with broker demand ratios, suggests institutional conviction in Claude’s enterprise traction is real.

Second, the AI model layer is increasingly being priced as a winner-take-most market. Brokers seeing 5:2 buyer ratios in favor of Anthropic over OpenAI reflects a bet that Claude’s positioning (safety, enterprise governance, and agentic capability) is pulling ahead. Whether that bet survives the IPO’s price discovery process is the question that matters.

For anyone watching the AI market structure, the $1.2 trillion number is best understood as a sentiment indicator, not a valuation. The IPO will produce the valuation. The secondary market is producing a fever chart.