Anthropic is having a moment in the private markets; SpaceX can spoil the party

Glen Anderson has been trading in the private equity sector since 2010, when the number of investors in businesses focused on the long-term equity market can be counted on two hands. Today, he says, there are thousands.

As president of investment bank Rainmaker Securities, which focuses on the private markets and facilitates the sale of nearly 1,000 properties, Anderson has a front-row seat to one of the biggest nail-biting moments in the history of the secondary market. And right now, he points out, the story has three big characters: Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX.

The bottom line: The story is more complicated than the headlines.

Anderson’s reading of Anthropic echoes Bloomberg’s report earlier this week: demand for the company’s shares is almost unsatisfied. Bloomberg quoted Ken Smythe, the founder and CEO of Next Round Capital, saying that buyers showed his outfit that they have $ 2 billion ready to be sent to Anthropic, although about $ 600 million in shares of OpenAI that investors are trying to sell did not find buyers.

Anderson sees similarities with Rainmaker. “The hardest thing to find in our market is Anthropic,” he told TechCrunch yesterday afternoon from his home in Miami. “There are no sellers.”

Part of what made it possible, Anderson says, was Anthropic social disharmony and the Department of Defense – a turn of events that at first seemed like bad news for the company but turned out to be a gift.

“The program became very popular, people surrounded the company as a hero, taking on the big government,” he said. “I think it expanded the story and made it very different from OpenAI.”

This difference is getting worse for investors who are moving in the market where, for many years, the prevailing opinion was everyone’s bet. Anderson says many investors still want more exposure to Anthropic and OpenAI. “The jury is still out,” he said, on which version of AI will win — but the trend, especially in the secondary market, has changed.

This does not mean that OpenAI has fallen flat. Anderson pushes back a bit by reading the situation.

“I can’t say it’s a conversation with one person or another,” he said.

But there is no happiness. “It’s not as bright a market as Anthropic at the moment,” he admitted.

In the analysis, Anderson confirmed several Bloomberg reports that OpenAI’s shares in the secondary market were trading as if the company was worth $765 billion — a huge discount from the company’s most recent valuation of $852 billion. He cautioned that he was working on his heart, but said Bloomberg’s numbers were “just right.”

OpenAI itself has attempted to significantly improve secondary trading. “People should be very careful with any company that wants to have access to OpenAI, including an SPV,” a spokesperson for OpenAI told Bloomberg, noting that the company has established legal procedures through banks, without fees, to deal with what it described as a high-paying system.

Perhaps more telling – at least for now – banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have begun offering OpenAI units to their high-priced clients without charging a fee, according to Bloomberg. Goldman, meanwhile, is charging its own carriers — typically 15% to 20% of profits — to clients who want exposure to Anthropic.

What is not due to this is SpaceX, which is distinguished by the evolution of other types of energy. Anderson explains that it is one of the only names in the Rainmaker universe that did not face the punitive penalty that affected the private market between 2022 and 2024, a period when the shares of many private companies fell 60% to 70% from their peak (their valuations rose much faster).

The rocket and satellite behemoth “has been very high and to the right,” Anderson said.

Anderson, who, naturally, has a financial interest in attracting the company and its former supporters, credits the management of SpaceX with stable prices and not spending every last dollar on any financial or charitable donations.

“Many companies fall prey to the temptation to raise the price of their products every cycle,” he said. The problem is that it leaves no room for error.”

SpaceX, by contrast, played it safe, “not too greedy,” and the benefits for those who had already invested were huge. “You can imagine if someone came into 2015 with what kind of profit they’re sitting on right now,” Anderson said.

To put a good point on this review: SpaceX was worth about $ 12 billion in 2015, while Google and Fidelity combined $ 1 billion in the company. Someone who entered at that price is now sitting on more than 100x profit, and the company is worth more than $1 trillion ahead of the planned IPO.

That IPO is now imminent, it seems. SpaceX is booked in private this week for an initial public offering, setting the stage for what could be one of the largest IPOs in history, with Elon Musk saying he wants to raise between $50 billion and $75 billion, possibly in June. Only the beginning of Saudi Aramco in 2019, which loved the energy giant at $ 1.7 trillion, is close.

Unsurprisingly, the filing of rumors has already changed the dynamics of the secondary market for SpaceX shares, according to Anderson.

“Today, I’ve seen more and more SpaceX investors come to me saying, ‘Can you give me SpaceX?'” he said. “It’s been a big buy side.” But availability is drying up. When a company is close to an IPO, the less fortunate have to sell because they can see the action up close.

This is where things start to get a little slow for OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies say they are reviewing their public offerings and have indicated they may move this year. But SpaceX, in the first draft, is about to test the market’s ambitions too much, and Anderson said that any follower will be at risk.

“SpaceX is going to make a lot of money,” he said bluntly. “There’s a lot of money invested in IPOs.” The first mover gets to the pot first; their target audience is highly targeted and, possibly, less money.

It is a variable that plays into everything that is called vertical and that the AI ​​industry is not completely immune to, despite the attention being paid to them right now. Time your IPO too early and you’re the one trying to get it on the market. Wait for someone to go first, and you may find the biggest checks have already been written.

You can hear more about our conversation with Anderson in an upcoming episode of Download StrictlyVC podcast, which drops every Tuesday. In the meantime, check out the latest episodes, including those with Whoop CEO Will Ahmed and investor Bill Gurley.