The $1 Trillion Question Behind Anthropic's Valuation Stampede

For the first time, reporting has surfaced what is actually selling. Anthropic's Claude Code coding tool accounts for roughly 4 percent of all public GitHub commits — the public repository network where developers store and share code — and is generating approximately $2.5 billion in annualized revenue, according to figures reported by Business Insider and corroborated by multiple investor outlets. The figure offers the first clear public accounting of what pushed Anthropic's annualized revenue to $30 billion in March, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, a 233 percent jump in a single quarter that Business Insider independently confirmed. The company confirmed the $30 billion run-rate in April without providing a product breakdown and declined to comment for this article.

That product-level accounting arrives as the secondary market has already priced Anthropic at roughly $1 trillion on Forge Global, a private share marketplace, per Business Insider citing the platform's CEO. One shareholder offered to sell at a $1.15 trillion implied valuation; one growth fund offered to buy at $1.05 trillion; Rainmaker Securities received an offer at $960 billion that was snapped up within hours. Those are indications of interest, not executed trades, and the platform's valuation methodology is proprietary. Secondary markets for private companies are thin and opaque — supply is limited because few insiders want to sell, and pricing is set by whoever is most desperate to own a piece. A few enthusiastic buyers can move the number faster than fundamentals.

The structural case for Anthropic's premium is where the evidence is strongest. OpenAI projects spending $121 billion on compute in 2028, with losses of $85 billion that year, and does not expect to break even until after 2030, per financial documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and reported by SaaStr. Anthropic's training costs peak at roughly $30 billion in the same period, about four times less, and the company projects reaching profitability in 2028 or 2029. Anthropic burns less to train its models and generates more revenue per dollar spent. That efficiency gap is what the secondary market is pricing in.

For investors who bought Anthropic at the $380 billion primary valuation three months ago — in the Series G round Anthropic announced in February — the secondary market already prices their stake at roughly $1 trillion. For investors who bought OpenAI at its most recent $852 billion primary round, the same secondary market prices their stake at $880 billion — a 3 percent gain in the same window. Some OpenAI investors are already questioning whether the company needs an IPO valuation of $1.2 trillion or higher to avoid a paper loss at listing, the Financial Times reported. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar has pushed back, pointing to the company's $122 billion raise as evidence of sustained investor confidence. One investor who has backed both companies compared OpenAI's position to Netscape — dominant until a faster competitor arrived and absorbed the market.

Anthropic has reportedly rebuffed venture capital investors who wanted to buy in at higher valuations, preferring to let secondary markets set price discovery ahead of a reported IPO as early as late 2026. When the company eventually prices a public offering, the $1 trillion secondary figure becomes the benchmark OpenAI must clear for its own listing. Between now and any IPO, the revenue has to keep growing at a pace that justifies the number. Whether Claude Code's current adoption rate is the floor or the ceiling for that growth — and whether Anthropic's other products can match it — is the question the secondary market has priced but not yet answered.