For the first time, Anthropic is worth more than OpenAI. Not on paper. Not in a term sheet. On the market where shares actually trade.

On Forge Global, a major private share marketplace, Anthropic's implied valuation has reached approximately $1 trillion, while OpenAI sits at $880 billion, according to data reported by Business Insider. One Anthropic shareholder is asking $1.15 trillion. The average across the platform is $1 trillion.

The reason is simple: revenue. Anthropic's annualized revenue jumped from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion by March 2026. That is a 233% increase in one quarter. Bloomberg attributes the surge primarily to explosive demand for Claude Code, Anthropic's coding tool that went from $1 billion ARR in November 2025 to $2.5 billion by February 2026. Enterprise customers paying more than $1 million per year doubled from 500 to over 1,000 in two months.

The Supply Problem

Secondary market valuations are driven by scarcity as much as performance. Anthropic employees and early investors have had limited opportunities to sell shares. When demand is high and supply is thin, prices can overshoot dramatically. This is what happened to many private tech companies in 2021, before the correction that reduced valuations by 60 to 70 percent between 2022 and 2024.

That context matters because Anthropic's IPO bankers are not pricing at $1 trillion. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, who are advising the company on a potential October 2026 listing, are reportedly targeting a $400 to $500 billion valuation at IPO. If that target holds, the secondary market is pricing Anthropic at roughly twice what its own bankers expect at listing.

What Changed

Three things converged. First, revenue tripled in a quarter. That is not a growth story. That is escape velocity. Second, Amazon dropped another $25 billion on Anthropic last week, bringing total committed investment to $33 billion and validating the revenue trajectory with the biggest single AI investment in history. Third, OpenAI's GPT-5.5 launched this week to reviews calling it fast and steady but not dominant. The narrative has shifted from 'when will Anthropic catch up' to 'has OpenAI already been caught.'

Ramp's Q1 2026 enterprise spending data confirmed the shift: Anthropic commands 37% of trackable enterprise AI spend versus OpenAI's 33%. It is the first time Anthropic has led on dollars, not just developer sentiment.

The OpenAI Gap

OpenAI last reported $25 billion in ARR as of February 2026. That number has not been updated. The company is valued at $880 billion on Forge Global and raised $122 billion in its last funding round at an $852 billion valuation. It is still bigger by most structural measures: more users, more consumer brand recognition, more products.

But secondary markets are forward-looking, and the forward story favors Anthropic right now. Claude Code is growing faster than any single OpenAI product. The enterprise spending share flipped. The Amazon deal is locked. And Anthropic does not have the product graveyard that OpenAI does: no Sora shutdown, no $1 billion Disney deal collapse, no three-executive departure in one day.

The Test

The $1 trillion number will face its real test when Anthropic files its S-1, likely before October. Public market investors will price the company against actual audited financials, not secondary market demand from buyers competing for scarce shares.

If the IPO prices at $400 to $500 billion, secondary buyers who paid $1 trillion are underwater on day one. If it prices higher, Anthropic becomes the most valuable tech IPO in history.

Either way, the secondary market has already answered the question that dominated the AI industry for two years: who is number one? The answer, at least on Forge Global, is the company that was founded by people who left the other one.