OpenAI and Anthropic have operated large-scale private stock sale programs for employees and early investors.
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Resolves an open debate about whether frontier AI labs can defer IPO indefinitely — both companies have built liquidity programs that reduce IPO urgency, yet are still pursuing public listings. This is a new structural force in the capital cycle for foundation model companies.
OpenAI and Anthropic have operated large-scale private stock sale programs for employees and early investors.
The two leading AI labs have enabled employees and early investors to sell a combined $14 billion (approximately 21 trillion won) in shares over the past five years through structured tender offers and secondary market programs, according to The Information. OpenAI alone has conducted at least eight such programs, allowing insiders to cash out more than $9 billion. The company recently filed confidential IPO paperwork and is preparing a new tender offer at a pre-money valuation of $730 billion. Anthropic, founded only five years ago, ran its first employee buyback in May 2025 at a $58 billion valuation and a subsequent multi-billion dollar sale earlier this year after raising at a $350 billion valuation.
Why it matters: These staggering pre-IPO liquidity programs defuse the traditional pressure for startups to go public — employees have already realized life-changing wealth without an IPO. This is a structural force in the capital-cycle dynamics of frontier AI labs, who increasingly treat tender offers as a permanent liquidity valve rather than a prelude to listing. The scale also signals that both companies expect to remain private for an extended period, using public market access primarily for capital raising rather than employee liquidity. SoftBank alone bought at least $1.7 billion in OpenAI shares through separate secondary transactions.
Grounded expert take: Secondary market specialists note that tender offers are a safety valve, not an IPO replacement. CapLight CEO Javier Avalos observed that OpenAI employees who have held shares for years face mounting pressure on companies to provide liquidity. Yet some employees at both labs are passing on tender offers, betting on even higher valuations post-IPO — Anthropic's recent employee sale reportedly saw less demand than investors expected. The pattern mirrors what SpaceX, Stripe, and Databricks have done, but at a dramatically larger scale reflecting the AI industry's unprecedented private-market valuations. Even so, the AI labs are pursuing IPOs primarily to access the massive capital needed for frontier model training — Anthropic president Dario Amodei called public markets "a very suitable funding vehicle" for capital-intensive AI development.
