Glenn Anderson has been brokering equity deals for private companies since 2010, when he could count the number of institutional investors interested in late-stage private markets on two hands. There are now thousands, he says.
As president of Rainmaker Securities, an investment bank that focuses exclusively on the private securities market and facilitates trading in about 1,000 stocks, Mr. Anderson has a front row seat to one of the most painful moments in secondary market history. And right now, he suggests, there are three main characters in this story: Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX.
As a result, the story is more complex than the headline suggests.
Anderson’s views on Anthropic are consistent with what Bloomberg reported earlier this week. In other words, demand for the company’s stock is nearly insatiable. Bloomberg quoted Ken Smythe, founder and CEO of Next Round Capital, as saying that despite the roughly $600 million worth of OpenAI stock investors are selling, the buyers have indicated to his organization that they are prepared to have $2 billion in cash to deploy to Anthropic.
Anderson sees something similar with Rainmaker. “The most difficult stock to source in our market is Anthropic,” he told TechCrunch from his home in Miami yesterday afternoon. “There just aren’t any sellers.”
Anderson argues that part of what fueled that demand was Anthropic’s very public conflict with the Department of Defense. What initially seemed like bad news for the company turned out to be a gift.
“The app became even more popular, and people rallied around the company as a kind of hero against big government,” he said. “I think this amplifies the story and further differentiates us from OpenAI.”
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This distinction is becoming increasingly relevant for investors navigating a market that has long been dominated by betting-on-all logic. Anderson notes that many institutional investors still want exposure to both Anthropic and OpenAI. “The jury is still out” on which AI model will ultimately win, he said, but momentum is shifting, at least in the secondary market.
That doesn’t mean OpenAI has fallen off a cliff. Anderson argues slightly against the dualistic interpretation of the situation.
“I can’t say it’s an either-or conversation,” he said.
But the excitement isn’t there. “It’s not as vibrant a market as Anthropic at the moment,” he admitted.
Regarding valuation, Anderson broadly confirmed a Bloomberg report that OpenAI stock in the secondary market is trading as if the company were valued at $765 billion. This is a significant discount to the company’s most recent first round valuation of $852 billion. He cautioned that he was working from memory, but said the Bloomberg numbers were “within a reasonable range.”
OpenAI itself is seeking to tighten its control over secondary transactions. “We should be very wary of any company that claims to have access to OpenAI stock, including through an SPV,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg, noting that the company has established commission-free sanctioned channels through banks to combat what it calls the high-commission broker model.
It’s probably clear that banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are starting to offer OpenAI stock to wealthy clients without charging carry fees, at least for now, according to Bloomberg. Goldman, on the other hand, charges regular carry (often 15% to 20% of profits) to clients seeking artificial exposure.
What none of this explains is SpaceX, which stands out amidst the shift in sentiment around these other powerful brands. Anderson explains that the company is one of the few in the rainmaker world that never experienced the punitive correction that hit a large portion of the private market between 2022 and 2024. During this period, the stock prices of many private companies fell 60% to 70% from their peaks (after valuations rose at a similar rate).
The rocket and satellite giants are “almost consistently on the upswing,” Anderson said.
Anderson, who understandably has a financial interest in pandering to the company and its early backers, credits SpaceX’s management with disciplined pricing and not squeezing every last penny out of every financing round or tender offer.
“Many companies will be tempted to maximize their stock price in every round,” he said. “The problem is that it leaves no room for error.”
In contrast, SpaceX acted conservatively by not being too greedy, and the returns to early investors were huge. “You can imagine what kind of benefits someone who joined in 2015 is getting now,” Anderson said.
To further point out this comment, SpaceX was valued at about $12 billion in 2015, when Google and Fidelity jointly invested $1 billion in the company. Anyone who entered at that price has now made more than 100x, valuing the company at more than $1 trillion ahead of its planned IPO.
It looks like that IPO is just around the corner. SpaceX secretly filed for an initial public offering this week, setting the stage for what could be the biggest market debut in history, with Elon Musk reportedly aiming to raise between $50 billion and $75 billion, possibly in June. Only Saudi Aramco’s 2019 debut, which valued the energy giant at $1.7 trillion, comes close.
Unsurprisingly, the rumored filing has already changed the dynamics of the secondary market for SpaceX stock, Anderson said.
“Today, I had a flood of SpaceX investors coming to me and saying, ‘Give me SpaceX,'” he said. “It’s a very active buy side.” But supply is drying up. The closer a company gets to an IPO, the less incentive existing shareholders have to sell because they know a liquidity event is just around the corner.
That’s where things get a little complicated for OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies are reportedly considering initial public offerings of their own and have indicated the move could occur this year. But SpaceX is testing market demand in a big way by filing first, and Anderson suggested that those who follow will be at a disadvantage.
“SpaceX is going to absorb a lot of liquidity,” he said flatly. “Funds allocated to IPOs are limited.” First movers reach the trough first. Those who comply will be subject to increased scrutiny and, in some cases, may have their funding reduced.
This is a dynamic that plays out across so-called every industry, and despite the current traction AI companies are receiving, they are not completely immune to this influence. Timing an IPO too early can test market receptivity. If you wait for others to go first, you may find that your biggest check has already been written.
You can hear more of our interview with Anderson on the next episode of the StrictlyVC Download podcast, which airs every Tuesday. In the meantime, check out our recent episodes, including those with Whoop CEO Will Ahmed and investor Bill Gurley.
