Massive employee liquidity events signal sky-high confidence, but both companies still need billions more for model training costs
OpenAI and Anthropic have collectively let their employees cash out roughly $14 billion in stock through secondary tender offers.
OpenAI and Anthropic, locked in an increasingly expensive race to build the most capable AI models, have each run major tender offers that gave employees the rare chance to convert paper wealth into real dollars.
Inside the numbers #
OpenAI’s October 2025 tender was the headliner. The company facilitated approximately $6.6 billion in share sales at a $500 billion valuation, with more than 600 participants taking part.
Around 75 OpenAI employees hit the maximum sell limit of $30 million each.
Anthropic followed with its own tender in April 2026, targeting $5 billion to $6 billion in sales at a $350 billion pre-money valuation. Employee participation came in below expectations not because people were disappointed with the price, but because many chose to hold their shares, betting the stock would be worth even more down the road.
Current secondary-market pricing for Anthropic shares suggests valuations ranging anywhere from $500 billion to $800 billion, a significant jump from the April tender’s $350 billion figure.
The IPO question looms large #
Both companies have confidentially filed for IPOs in 2026, which means the tender offers aren’t just employee perks. They’re strategic pressure valves designed to reduce the internal demand for liquidity before a public listing.
While $14 billion has flowed out to employees, both OpenAI and Anthropic still need massive infusions of capital to fund model training. The compute costs required to train frontier AI models run into the tens of billions of dollars annually. Anthropic’s revenue run rate has reportedly reached $30 billion, though OpenAI has disputed that figure.
What this means for investors #
The $14 billion in employee liquidity represents one of the largest pre-IPO wealth creation events in tech history. Most successful startups run tender offers in the hundreds of millions, not billions.
For prospective IPO investors, OpenAI at $500 billion and Anthropic at $350 billion (and climbing on secondaries) are priced like mature mega-caps. If public markets assign any kind of discount for the capital intensity of training next-generation models, early IPO buyers could face turbulence. Employees who held their Anthropic shares during the April tender appear to be sitting on substantial gains already, based on secondary-market pricing.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our