April 4, 2026 — A battle for investor capital is intensifying in the private markets. According to a veteran broker, demand for shares in AI firm Anthropic has become “insatiable,” while SpaceX’s confidential IPO filing is beginning to redirect massive flows of money.
Glen Anderson, president of investment bank Rainmaker Securities, described the current climate. His firm facilitates trades in about 1,000 private stocks. “The hardest stock to source in our marketplace is Anthropic,” Anderson told TechCrunch. “There’s just no sellers.”
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Anthropic’s Unexpected Boost
Anderson argues that Anthropic’s public dispute with the U.S. Department of Defense, which initially seemed damaging, ultimately helped the company. He suggests it made the firm’s story more distinct from its rival, OpenAI, and rallied support. This aligns with a Bloomberg report from earlier this week, which cited investor Ken Smythe of Next Round Capital saying buyers had $2 billion ready to deploy into Anthropic.
Meanwhile, the market for OpenAI shares appears cooler. Anderson confirmed that roughly $600 million in OpenAI shares are looking for buyers. He broadly confirmed Bloomberg’s reporting that OpenAI secondary shares are trading at a valuation of around $765 billion. That’s a notable discount to the company’s latest primary funding round valuation of $852 billion.
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OpenAI has tried to control its secondary market. A company spokesperson told Bloomberg that people should be “extremely cautious” of brokers and noted the company established authorized, no-fee channels through banks. Banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have reportedly begun offering OpenAI shares to wealthy clients without charging the typical performance fees.
SpaceX’s Disciplined Ascent
The dynamics shift dramatically with SpaceX. Anderson describes it as one of the few major private companies that avoided the severe valuation corrections that hit the market between 2022 and 2024. “It’s been pretty much consistently up and to the right,” he said.
He credits management’s pricing discipline. “A lot of companies will fall for the temptation to maximize the price of their stock in every round,” Anderson noted. “The problem is that that doesn’t leave any room for error.” SpaceX, he argues, played it conservatively.
The payoff for early investors has been staggering. A $12 billion valuation in 2015 has ballooned to over $1 trillion today. That represents a gain of more than 100 times for investors from that era.
The IPO Liquidity Squeeze
SpaceX filed confidentially for an initial public offering this week. Reports suggest Elon Musk aims to raise $50 billion to $75 billion, potentially in June. This would make it one of the largest market debuts ever, rivaled only by Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing.
The filing has immediately changed secondary market activity. “Today, I saw a flood of SpaceX investors coming to me saying, ‘Can you give me SpaceX?'” Anderson said. “It’s been a very active buy side.” But sellers are vanishing as shareholders anticipate the imminent public listing.
This creates a looming problem for other tech giants. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are reportedly considering their own public offerings this year. Anderson suggests SpaceX’s first-mover advantage will be significant. “SpaceX is going to soak up a lot of liquidity,” he stated flatly. “There’s only so much money out there allocated to IPOs.”
The first company to go public tests market receptivity. But those who follow often face more scrutiny and may find the largest checks have already been written.
What This Means for Investors
The current private market narrative reveals a fragmented story. Extreme demand for one AI leader coexists with cooler sentiment for another. A space exploration giant is on the cusp of a historic exit, threatening to drain capital from the sector.
For years, the prevailing logic was to bet on all major players in a hot sector. That strategy is now being tested. Investors are making sharper distinctions between companies, even within the same industry. The implication is that access to capital for subsequent mega-IPOs may not be guaranteed, regardless of a company’s profile.
Market data from platforms like Rainmaker Securities shows capital concentration is increasing. A single, massive offering can redirect billions in intended investment. The coming months will show whether the market’s appetite is deep enough for multiple trillion-dollar tech debuts in quick succession.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy and quality.
