Glen Anderson has been brokering private equity deals since 2010, when the number of institutional investors focused on the late-stage private market could be counted on two hands. Today, he says, there are thousands.
As president of the investment bank Rainmaker Securities, whose focus includes the private equity markets (it facilitates transactions in approximately 1,000 stocks), Anderson has a front-row seat to one of the most exciting moments in secondary market history. And right now, he suggests, the narrative has three main characters: Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX.
But the story is more complicated than the headlines suggest.
Anderson’s reading of Anthropic is consistent with what Bloomberg reported earlier this week: Demand for the company’s stock has become nearly insatiable. Bloomberg cited Ken Smythe, founder and CEO of Next Round Capital, as saying that buyers had indicated to his team that they had $2 billion in cash ready to deploy into Anthropic, even as roughly $600 million in OpenAI shares that investors are trying to sell have not found buyers.
Anderson sees something similar in Rainmaker. “The hardest stock to get in our market is Anthropic,” he told TechCrunch yesterday afternoon from his home in Miami. “There are just no sellers.”
Part of what drove that demand, Anderson maintains, was the very public confrontation with the Department of Defense, a turn of events that initially seemed like bad news for the company but ended up becoming a gift.
“The app became more popular, people joined the company as a kind of hero, taking on big government,” he said. “I think it amplified the story and differentiated it even more from OpenAI.”
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That distinction is increasingly significant for investors navigating a market where, for years, the predominant logic was to bet on everyone. 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 the momentum, at least in the secondary market, has shifted.
That doesn’t mean OpenAI has fallen off a cliff. Anderson slightly rejects a binary reading of the situation.
“I wouldn’t say it’s an either/or conversation,” he said.
But the excitement is not there. “Right now it’s not as vibrant a market as Anthropic,” he acknowledged.
As for valuation, Anderson broadly confirmed Bloomberg’s report that OpenAI shares on the secondary market are trading as if the company is valued at $765 billion, a measurable discount to the most recent valuation of the company’s $852 billion primary round. He cautioned that he was working from memory, but said Bloomberg’s figure was “in the right range.”
OpenAI itself has attempted to exert greater control over secondary trading. “People should be extremely cautious of any company seeking to access OpenAI capital, even through an SPV,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg, noting that the company had established commission-free, authorized channels through banks to counter what it described as a high-fee broker model.
Perhaps tellingly, at least for now, banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have begun offering OpenAI shares to their high-net-worth clients without charging carriage fees, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Goldman is charging its usual carry (often 15% to 20% of profits) to clients seeking anthropogenic exposure.
What none of this explains is SpaceX, which stands out amid the shift in sentiment around these other powerful brands. Anderson describes it as one of the only names in the Rainmaker universe that never experienced the harsh correction that hit much of the private market between 2022 and 2024, a period in which shares of many private companies fell 60% to 70% from their highs (after their valuations rose just as quickly).
The rocket and satellite giant “has been consistently up and to the right,” Anderson said.
Anderson, who naturally has a financial interest in flattering the company and its former backers, credits SpaceX management with disciplined pricing and not squeezing every last dollar out of every financing round or public offering.
“Many companies will be tempted to maximize their share price each round,” he said. “The problem is that this leaves no room for error.”
SpaceX, on the other hand, acted conservatively, “not getting too greedy,” and the reward for previous investors has been enormous. “You can imagine if someone came in in 2015, what kind of profit they will have now,” Anderson said.
To make that comment concrete: SpaceX was valued at approximately $12 billion in 2015, when Google and Fidelity jointly invested $1 billion in the company. Someone who entered at that price is now sitting on more than a 100x profit, with the company valued at more than $1 billion ahead of its planned initial public offering.
That IPO is now imminent, apparently. SpaceX presented confidentially this week for an initial public offering, setting the stage for what could be one of the biggest market debuts 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, has come close.
Unsurprisingly, the rumored filing has already changed the dynamics of the secondary market for SpaceX stock, according to Anderson.
“Today I saw a rush of SpaceX investors coming to me and saying, ‘Can you give me SpaceX?’” he said. “It’s been a very active buying side.” But the supply is running out. The closer a company gets to an IPO, the less incentive existing shareholders have to sell because they can see the liquidity event on the horizon.
That’s where things get a little more complicated for OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies are reportedly exploring their own public offerings and have signaled they could act this year. But SpaceX, by coming first, is about to test the market’s appetite in a big way, and Anderson suggested whoever follows will be at a disadvantage.
“SpaceX is going to absorb a lot of liquidity,” he said flatly. “There is a limited amount of money allocated to IPOs.” The first to move gets to the feeder first; those who follow them face greater scrutiny and, potentially, less capital.
It is a dynamic that plays out in all so-called verticals and from which AI companies are not completely immune, despite the attention being paid to them at the moment. Time your IPO too early and you will be the one testing the market’s receptiveness. Wait for someone else to go first and you may find that the most important checks have already been written.
You can hear more of our interview with Anderson in the next episode of Download Strictly VC podcast, which comes out every Tuesday. In the meantime, check out recent episodes, including those with Whoop CEO Will Ahmed and investor Bill Gurley.
