OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation faces skepticism from some of its own investors as the company pivots around enterprise customers and rushes to fend off Anthropic’s attack, according to the Financial Times.
Anthropic’s annual revenue soared from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion by the end of March, largely due to demand for its coding tools. An investor who backed both companies told the FT that to justify an OpenAI round, an IPO valuation of $1.2 trillion or more would have to be assumed, making Anthropic’s current valuation of $380 billion look cheap in comparison.
The secondary market is currently telling the same story, with demand for Anthropic stock growing almost insatiably, and OpenAI stock trading at a discount.
Altman has been here before. During his tenure at the helm of Y Combinator, aggressive valuation inflation left some portfolio companies financially stranded, while others turned out to be worth pennies and even pennies.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar pushed back, telling the FT that the company’s $122 billion raise – the largest private capital raise in history – was evidence of continued investor confidence. Not everyone will be persuaded. Jai Das, president of investment firm Sapphire Ventures (which has no interest in either company), told the FT that he sees OpenAI as the “Netscape of AI.” This refers to the once-dominant browser that was overtaken by Microsoft and eventually absorbed by AOL.
Update: This article has been updated to remove an investor quote published by the Financial Times that was later removed.
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