Glenn Anderson has been brokering private company stock deals since 2010, when the number of institutional investors focused on late-stage private markets could be counted on two hands. Today he says there are thousands.
As chairman of Rainmaker Securities, an investment bank that focuses exclusively on the private equity market and facilitates trading in about 1,000 stocks, Anderson is on the verge of one of the most defining moments in secondary market history. And right now, he suggests, there are three main players in the narrative: Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX.
The bottom line is that the storyline is more complex than the headlines suggest.
Anderson’s analysis of Anthropic is consistent with what Bloomberg reported earlier this week. That means demand for the company’s stock has become nearly insatiable. Bloomberg quotes Ken Smythe, founder and CEO of Next Round Capital, as saying he has instructed his team that buyers have $2 billion in cash to deploy at Anthropic, even though about $600 million of the OpenAI stock investors are trying to sell has not found an underwriter.
Anderson sees something similar in Rainmaker. “The hardest stock to source in our market is Anthropic,” he told TechCrunch from his Miami home yesterday afternoon. “There is no one selling.”
Andersen argues that Anderopic’s public standoff with the Department of Defense was one of the things that supercharged its demands. It was a turn of events that initially seemed like bad news for the company but ended up being a gift.
“The app became more popular and people rallied around the company like heroes to fight against big government,” he said. “I think it amplifies the story and makes it more differentiated from OpenAI.”
Tech Crunch Event
San Francisco, California
|
October 13-15, 2026
This distinction is increasingly meaningful to investors navigating a market where for years the dominant logic has been to bet on everyone. Anderson notes that many institutional investors still want exposure to Anthropic and OpenAI. “The jury is still out” on whether the AI model will ultimately triumph, he said. But the momentum has shifted, at least in the secondary market.
That doesn’t mean OpenAI fell off a cliff. Anderson pushes back a bit on this dichotomous interpretation of the situation.
“I wouldn’t say this is a one-on-one conversation,” he said.
But there is no emotion. “It’s not as active a market as Anthropic right now,” he acknowledged.
In his assessment, Andersen broadly confirmed Bloomberg’s report that OpenAI stock is trading on the secondary market as if the company were valued at $765 billion. This is a significant discount compared to the company’s most recent primary valuation of $852 billion. He cautioned that he was working from memory but said the Bloomberg numbers were in the “right range.”
OpenAI itself has tried to assert more control over secondary transactions. “People should be extremely cautious about companies claiming access to OpenAI equity, including SPVs,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg. An OpenAI spokesperson noted that the company has established a no-fee approved channel through banks to counter its high-fee broker model.
For now, at least, banks including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have begun offering OpenAI stock to high-net-worth clients without holding fees, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Goldman is charging its customary carry (often 15% to 20% of profits) from clients seeking anthropological exposure.
What none of this explains is SpaceX setting itself apart amid shifting sentiment toward other powerful brands. Anderson describes it as one of the only names in the Rainmaker universe that did not experience the punishing correction that hit much of the private market between 2022 and 2024, a period in which many private companies’ stock prices fell 60% to 70% from their peaks (after their valuations rose quickly).
The behemoth of a rocket and satellite “moved almost consistently to the right,” Anderson said.
Anderson, who naturally has an economic interest in praising the company and its former backers, credits SpaceX’s management for disciplined pricing and not squeezing every last dollar out of each funding round or public offering.
“Many companies will be tempted to maximize their share price in each round,” he said. “The problem is there is absolutely no room for error.”
In contrast, SpaceX acted conservatively, “without being too greedy,” and the rewards for early investors were huge. “If someone had joined in 2015, you can imagine what kind of benefits they would be getting now,” Anderson said.
To further elaborate on this comment, SpaceX was valued at approximately $12 billion in 2015, when Google and Fidelity jointly invested $1 billion in the company. Anyone who invested at that price is now enjoying a profit of more than 100 times that, valuing the company more than $1 trillion ahead of its planned IPO.
Now it looks like an IPO is imminent. SpaceX secretly filed for an initial public offering this week, setting the stage for what could be one of the biggest market debuts in history, and Elon Musk is 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, came close.
According to Anderson, it’s not surprising that the rumored filing has already changed the dynamics of the secondary market for SpaceX stock.
“Today I saw a flood of SpaceX investors saying to me, ‘Can you give me SpaceX?’” he said. “It’s been a very active buying side.” But supplies are running out. The closer a company gets to an IPO, the less incentive existing shareholders have to sell because they can see a liquidity event right around the corner.
This is where things get a little more difficult for OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies are reportedly exploring initial public offerings of their own and have signaled they could make the move this year. But SpaceX will be testing the market’s preferences in a big way by filing first, and Anderson suggested that whoever follows will be at a disadvantage.
“SpaceX is going to absorb a lot of liquidity,” he said flatly. “There is only so much money allocated to IPOs.” The first mover gets to the trough first. Those who follow face more scrutiny and potentially less capital.
This is a dynamic that occurs in so-called all sectors, and despite the current focus on AI companies, they are not completely immune. Timing your IPO too early means you will be the only one testing market acceptance. If you wait for someone else to go first, you’ll find that the biggest check has already been written.
You can hear more about our interview with Anderson in the next episode of the StrictlyVC Download podcast, released every Tuesday. In the meantime, check out our recent episodes, including one with Whoop CEO Will Ahmed and investor Bill Gurley.
