OpenAI's fall from grace as investors race to Anthropic
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 4/5/2026, 11:33:01 PM
Comments
by: majormajor
> The large gap between OpenAI’s $852-billion valuation and Anthropic’s $380 billion has investors rushing to grab equity in the latter before it rises, according to Augment co-founder Adam Crawley.<p>Interesting, so there are a lot of people still eager to invest in valuations of well greater than a-quarter-trillion, but OpenAI's latest raise has sucked up all the oxygen for enthusiasm of that valuation going even higher.<p>Which could be a "dumb money" move ("competitor number lower, already-big-number is scary") or a "smart money" move ("Anthropic is gaining position-wise, and currently is lower valued, let's bet on the one we think is better positioned") or some mix of both.<p>OpenAI just raised a shit-ton so clearly there is plenty of money out there who don't think there's a bubble or even a blown opportunity there. But the wider community doesn't think they have the competition in the bag, while still being willing to invest in big-AI-cos at absolutely enormous valuations.<p>If local hardware/models get good enough to take 80%-90% of what people use subscriptions for today... hoo boy. Big-AI is a bet I wouldn't be confident placing billions on. Unless your horizon is more "wait for IPO or next raise or positive news, then get out ASAP" than "hold for 5+ years."
4/6/2026, 12:52:50 AM
by: brookst
I don’t know how OpenAI screwed this up. They had the best tech, the largest installed base, the best brand recognition.<p>And somehow instead of prosecuting the lead in all areas, they got all hubristic and sloppy and just failed to iterate on the core product, while also failing to respond quickly when Anthropic showed that coding agents are the flywheel that makes the whole company faster.<p>It’s like they thought they had an unassailable monopoly and speedran to the lazy incumbent position, all in a matter of months.
4/6/2026, 12:47:25 AM
by: whoopdeepoo
Both of these valuations are absolutely absurd. I guess Anthropic looks good in comparison, but I don't want to hold that bag.<p>The Chinese models are catching up in quality while being a fraction of the price. The market will speak, how many devices that contributed to this thread were made in the USA?<p>Sure you can argue the Chinese companies are heavily subsidized, but no major LLM lab is remotely close to making a profit this decade.
4/6/2026, 1:33:54 AM
by: yalogin
Anthropic is not meaningfully better. Their stance is “the good guys have to make money to be in the fight with the bad guys” and so they do all the things their perceived bad guys do. I don’t know how they can do any different, but we just trust them to be good? What is the difference?
4/6/2026, 1:49:33 AM
by: the_cat_kittles
let me know when they scrap the data centers, id love to get some good deals on hvac equiptment. these companies cannot possibly make enough money when you can run something on your own computer that works mostly as good
4/6/2026, 1:46:01 AM
by: naveen99
And x.ai is at $2T now, while qwen baba is under $200B…
4/6/2026, 3:03:31 AM
by: mitchbob
<a href="https://archive.ph/ExQkj" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/ExQkj</a>
4/6/2026, 1:45:24 AM
by: xhevahir
Odd timing...Everything I've read about Claude the last several days suggests that its users are disappointed, even furious at what's happened to its performance.
4/6/2026, 12:54:18 AM
by: hgoel
I wonder how much of this is associated with Scam Altman's personal negative PR and Anthropic's recent PR wins.<p>I'm inclined to think there isn't much of an association becauss investors don't seem very concerned with morality, but I know ~dozen developers that either switched to, or started using Claude in the past month or so, while not knowing anyone that uses Codex.
4/6/2026, 1:03:26 AM
by: lateforwork
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4/6/2026, 1:44:19 AM
by: cmiles8
tl;dr nobody wants OpenAI shares and the secondary market has completely dried up.<p>“We literally couldn’t find anyone in our pool of hundreds of institutional investors to take these shares“<p>This doesn’t bode well for an IPO. The market is smelling a stinker.<p>Get your popcorn ready for a mad scramble to salvage investments if indeed the shark has been jumped.
4/6/2026, 12:34:27 AM
by: epitrochoid413
OpenAI is being squeezed from both sides.<p>ChatGPT's chat quality has recently dropped hard. While Claude is pricier, it actually takes the effort to think through complex tasks.<p>All the while, Chinese models are providing cheaper alternatives.
4/6/2026, 2:22:26 AM