OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation is facing skepticism from some of its own investors as the company scrambles to reorient itself around enterprise customers and fend off Anthropic, according to the Financial Times.
Anthropic’s annualized revenue jumped from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion by the end of March, driven largely by demand for its coding tools. One investor who has backed both companies told the FT that justifying OpenAI’s round required assuming an IPO valuation of $1.2 trillion or more — making Anthropic’s current $380 billion valuation look like the relative bargain.
The secondary market tells a similar story right now, where demand for Anthropic shares has grown nearly insatiable while OpenAI shares are trading at a discount.
Sam Altman has been here before. During his tenure leading Y Combinator, aggressive valuation inflation left some portfolio companies financially stranded while others proved to be worth every penny and then some.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar pushed back, telling the FT that the company’s $122 billion raise — the largest private fundraising in history — was evidence of continued investor confidence. Not everyone is persuaded. Jai Das, president of investment firm Sapphire Ventures (who has no stake in either company), told the FT he saw OpenAI as “the Netscape of AI,” a reference to the once-dominant browser that was overtaken by Microsoft and eventually absorbed by AOL.
Update: This piece has been updated to remove an investor quote published and later removed by the Financial Times.
