1. Headline & Intro
Anthropic’s stock is suddenly the hardest ticket to get in Silicon Valley’s grey market, while OpenAI looks merely “very expensive” instead of electric. And just as AI fever peaks, SpaceX is preparing to pull tens of billions out of public markets with a record‑scale IPO. This is not just another funding headline. It’s a live stress test of how much capital is truly available for frontier tech — and who gets squeezed when the music slows. In this piece we unpack what the Anthropic frenzy and the looming SpaceX listing really signal for AI, investors, and everyone planning an IPO in 2026.
2. The News in Brief
According to TechCrunch, trading in late‑stage private shares has tilted sharply toward Anthropic. Glen Anderson, president of Rainmaker Securities, says demand for Anthropic stock on secondary markets is intense, with very few existing holders willing to sell. Bloomberg previously reported that buyers had indicated around $2 billion of capital ready for Anthropic shares.
OpenAI, by contrast, is seeing far less excitement. TechCrunch reports that roughly $600 million worth of OpenAI stock is being offered by investors but isn’t finding ready buyers, and that secondary trades imply a valuation near $765 billion — below the company’s recent primary valuation of about $852 billion. Banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are reportedly offering OpenAI exposure to wealthy clients without charging carry, while Anthropic exposure still attracts hefty performance fees.
In parallel, SpaceX has confidentially filed for an IPO that could raise $50–75 billion at a valuation above $1 trillion. TechCrunch notes that demand for SpaceX shares on the secondary market has surged since the filing chatter, while supply has dried up as existing investors wait for the IPO. Anderson warns that such a massive listing could absorb much of the capital allocated to new tech IPOs, putting OpenAI and Anthropic at a disadvantage if they list afterward.
3. Why This Matters
The secondary market is often dismissed as a side show, but it’s where the most informed money quietly votes with real cash. The current pattern — Anthropic oversubscribed, OpenAI trading at a discount, and SpaceX hoovering up attention — tells us three important things.
First, AI is no longer a monolithic trade. For most of the last two years, institutional investors tried to get exposure to any leading model lab. Now they are clearly ranking them. Anthropic is being treated as the high‑conviction “growth story,” while OpenAI looks more like a crowded trade where early enthusiasm outran current appetite.
Second, fees are a tell. When Goldman Sachs is happy to waive performance fees on OpenAI exposure but charges full carry for Anthropic, it’s not about generosity; it’s about where they believe upside (and client demand) is greatest. Anthropic becomes the premium ticket, OpenAI the blue chip that needs a discount.
Third, SpaceX changes the entire equation. A $50–75 billion raise at a trillion‑plus valuation is not just another IPO; it’s a liquidity black hole. Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, big mutual funds — they all have finite allocations to high‑growth tech. If they pile into SpaceX, there is simply less room, this year, for megadeals from OpenAI, Anthropic or any other unicorn dreaming of a blockbuster listing.
The losers in this setup are late‑stage startups that still believe 2021 pricing is the norm, and employees who waited to sell in hopes of even higher paper valuations. The winners, for now, are Anthropic shareholders and SpaceX insiders who timed their windows better — and investors disciplined enough to demand a margin of safety on OpenAI.
4. The Bigger Picture
To understand this moment, you have to zoom out from the three logos and look at shifting market psychology.
From 2020 to 2021, the rule was “growth at any price.” Then the 2022–2024 tech correction punished over‑valued private companies, with many late‑stage names marked down 60–70%. SpaceX, as TechCrunch notes, largely avoided that cliff by not maxing out each funding round’s valuation. That discipline now looks like a masterclass in keeping investors whole.
AI sits on top of that scar tissue. Nvidia and the hyperscalers absorbed the first wave of AI capital, while private labs like OpenAI and Anthropic raised huge rounds at valuations normally reserved for mature platform companies. The bet was that these labs would become the next “operating system” layer of the internet.
The new twist is that investors have moved from asking, “Who has the biggest model?” to, “Who is turning that model into a durable business?” Anthropic’s positioning — more enterprise‑oriented, more narrowly focused than OpenAI’s sprawling product surface — may currently read as a clearer, cleaner thesis to institutional buyers.
We’ve seen similar dynamics before. In the dot‑com era, some infrastructure plays (think Cisco) were perceived as safer long‑term bets than flashy consumer brands. Later, in the ride‑hailing wars, Uber’s valuation story diverged from Lyft’s once investors decided only one of them had genuine global scale and a path to profitability.
Today, SpaceX plays the role of “infrastructure mega‑bet” for the real economy — satellites, launch, connectivity — while Anthropic and OpenAI compete for the role of dominant AI platform. What ties them together is simple: public markets can only digest so many trillion‑dollar stories at once. The era of “fund everything” is over; the era of brutal capital rationing has begun.
5. The European / Regional Angle
For European investors and founders, this triangle between Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX is more than Silicon Valley drama; it’s a mirror of our own constraints.
Most EU pension funds and insurers remain relatively conservative about late‑stage tech exposure. When a SpaceX‑scale IPO appears, many European institutions will feel pressure to participate — it’s hard to skip what might be the landmark industrial tech listing of the decade. That can crowd out appetite for backing high‑valuation AI IPOs in the same year.
At the same time, the EU is finalising the AI Act and already enforcing GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). These frameworks will shape how quickly European corporates adopt frontier AI models and where data is allowed to flow. That introduces regulatory risk that U.S. AI giants must price in when they expand here — and creates space for European AI players like Mistral, Aleph Alpha, DeepL or Stability AI’s European operations to position themselves as more “sovereign‑friendly” alternatives.
Secondary markets for private shares are also less developed in Europe than in the U.S. That means employees at high‑growth European startups typically have fewer chances to sell before an IPO or acquisition. Watching Anthropic staff monetize options at eye‑watering prices may increase pressure on European founders and regulators to loosen rules around employee liquidity, or to support more organised secondary platforms within the EU.
For Slovenia, Germany, Croatia and the wider CEE/Balkan ecosystem, there’s a more direct lesson: the bar for late‑stage capital is rising. If global investors are forced to choose between SpaceX, Anthropic and a regional AI or space startup, our companies will need sharper positioning, clearer revenue stories and often more realistic valuations.
6. Looking Ahead
The biggest question now is sequencing. If SpaceX lists in mid‑2026 and performs strongly, the window for other mega‑IPOs could either widen — because investors feel emboldened — or narrow sharply if buyers feel “full” on high‑beta tech for a while.
For OpenAI, the secondary discount is a warning light. It suggests that some early investors and employees are eager to lock in gains, while marginal buyers want a better price. That doesn’t kill an IPO, but it does argue for either more time to grow into the valuation or a more modest pricing strategy when going public.
Anthropic, by contrast, faces a different risk: over‑expectation. If it rides this wave of private‑market enthusiasm into a rushed IPO, any stumble in revenue growth or margins could trigger a painful rerating. The history of hot tech listings is full of names that priced perfectly — and then spent years trading below issue price.
For European readers, the practical move is to watch three signals:
- How much SpaceX upsizes its deal and how its stock trades after listing.
- Whether OpenAI’s secondary discount narrows — a sign of healing sentiment — or widens.
- How regulators implement the AI Act in practice, especially around foundation models and high‑risk use cases.
If SpaceX absorbs most of 2026’s tech‑IPO risk budget, we may see Anthropic and OpenAI push their listings into 2027 or pursue more structured secondary transactions instead. That, in turn, would keep private secondary markets at the centre of price discovery for the world’s most watched AI firms.
7. The Bottom Line
Anthropic’s current mania and OpenAI’s relative cooling are not just a popularity contest; they are a sign that capital for frontier AI is becoming more selective, just as SpaceX prepares to drain a huge amount of liquidity from global markets. For European investors and founders, the message is clear: the window for mega‑valuations is narrowing, and discipline matters again. The real question is who will still look underpriced — not overhyped — once the SpaceX dust settles.
