Research every employee tender offer, buyback, or secondary sale involving Anthropic shares, plus secondary-market indications…

Anthropic has run two company-facilitated employee liquidity events, both priced at or just below the nearest primary round, while the open secondary market has repeatedly marked the stock far above those company-set prices—and then Anthropic tried to shut most of that market down. Completed employee sales are small relative to demand. Almost every “market” price after mid-2026 is an indication, not a deep clearing price.

Company-run employee liquidity

May 2025 buyback — par to Series E, company as the buyer. Anthropic’s first employee liquidity program was a company repurchase, not a sale to outside funds. The Information reported on May 2, 2025 that Anthropic would buy shares from current and former employees at a $61.5 billion valuation, matching the March 3, 2025 Series E led by Lightspeed ($3.5 billion raised, $61.5 billion post-money). Eligible sellers were people who had worked at the company at least two years; they could sell up to 20% of equity, capped at $2 million per person, at $56.09 per share—the Series E issue price. The program was expected to close by the end of May 2025. Total dollars bought back were not disclosed; contemporaneous coverage described “hundreds of millions” as a plausible outcome, not a confirmed figure. Versus the nearest priced round, the premium/discount was zero on the preferred price the company itself had just set. Reliability is medium-high on price, valuation, tenure, percentage, and cap (multiple outlets citing The Information); low on aggregate size. Liquidity was real for eligible employees but tightly rationed.

February–early April 2026 tender — $350 billion pre-money, undersubscribed because employees would not sell. Bloomberg reported on February 4, 2026 that Anthropic was planning an employee tender at a valuation of at least $350 billion, the same pre-money figure then being discussed for a primary round. On February 23–24, Bloomberg reported the company had opened a sale for some current and former employees at about $350 billion, with outside investors—not Anthropic—lined up to buy $5–6 billion of stock, final size depending on how many employees opted in. Eligibility: current and former employees with at least 12 months of tenure. No public per-person dollar cap or percentage cap was reported. The primary closed February 12, 2026: $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion post-money valuation, led by GIC and Coatue (Anthropic’s own announcement). The tender therefore priced at the Series G pre-money mark—about an 8% discount to the $380 billion post-money figure, and at par to the pre-money. Bloomberg reported on April 8, 2026 that the tender had closed the prior week at that same $350 billion pre-money level, but employees sold less than investors had capital for. Some buyers got full allocations; others did not. Exact dollars transacted were not disclosed. Forge’s funding table, as reproduced by Yahoo Finance, lists a “Tender Offer 1” dated April 8, 2026 against a $380 billion valuation with no issue price shown—treat that as a platform label of the same event, not a second price. A per-share tender price was not publicly reported. Reliability: high that the event happened at the Series G pre-money mark and fell short of $5–6 billion of demand; low on the exact dollars that cleared. The mechanism that matters: this was a curated syndicate price, not an auction. Employees who declined were, within weeks, looking at secondary indications and inbound primary interest far above $350 billion.

Not yet a transaction: IPO secondary component. In late August 2026, The Information reported (via Reuters and others) that Anthropic was considering letting existing shareholders sell stock in the IPO itself, possibly with lockups longer than 180 days, and possibly requiring rank-and-file sales through 10b5-1 plans. Bankers had discussed valuations around $1.5 trillion; later Reuters reporting on the draft prospectus described an expected valuation that could exceed $2 trillion. Size, who can sell, and eligibility were not set. This is a contemplated structure, not a completed secondary. Reliability: medium on the fact of the discussion; low on terms.

Forced investor secondary: the FTX block

The largest disclosed secondary before the employee programs was not employee stock. It was the FTX bankruptcy estate selling the stake Sam Bankman-Fried’s entities bought in 2021.

• March 2024: court filings showed a deal to sell about 29.5 million shares for roughly $884 million, about $30 per share. Buyers included ATIC Third International (an Abu Dhabi/Mubadala-linked vehicle, about $500 million / 16.6 million shares), Jane Street (about $100 million), Fidelity-managed funds (about $50 million), and a long list of others. Hiive-related SPVs and Anthropic-affiliated vehicles also appeared among buyers in court documents summarized by Decrypt. Subject to bankruptcy-court approval.
• May–June 2024: the estate sold the remaining about 15 million shares at the same about $30 per share, for more than $450 million. G Squared took about 4.5 million shares for about $135 million. Combined proceeds from the original $500 million investment were reported around $1.3 billion.

Implied equity value on the $30 prints was in the mid-teens of billions, in the neighborhood of Anthropic’s then-latest primary (Menlo-led financing around $18.4 billion in early 2024, depending on the source). These were court-supervised block sales of a forced seller, so they are more reliable as executed prices than platform indications, but they are not a continuous market and they reflect a distressed holder, not employee optionality. Eligibility was “whoever the estate and Anthropic’s transfer process would accept,” not an employee program.

Secondary-market indications (not company tenders)

Treat every figure below as publicly reported or estimated. None is a continuous, deep market. Anthropic’s own May 2026 support-page warning said transfers not approved by the board are void and will not be recognized, that SPVs are not permitted to acquire Anthropic stock, and that forward contracts and unauthorized platforms do not convey recognized ownership. Named in contemporaneous coverage: Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive (new offerings), Forge Global (new offerings), Sydecar, and Upmarket. Forge later said it had been included erroneously. Hiive acknowledged the company’s concerns. That policy is the binding constraint on liquidity: a print that never receives board approval is a contract with a counterparty, not a share.

Platform and broker marks, with the nearest primary:

• Late 2024, Notice. A Notice.co subscriber report dated December 23, 2024 showed a 60-day consensus around $44.56 and stated Anthropic did not allow direct transfers—only indirect exposure via SPVs or forwards. No company valuation was attached in that extract. Nearest primary context was the path from the early-2024 ~$18 billion area toward the March 2025 $61.5 billion Series E. Reliability: low; a single delayed consensus screen, and the structure was explicitly not direct stock.
• January 2026, Caplight via Augment. Before the Series G, Caplight-tracked secondary pricing was described as about $150–175 per share, roughly in line with the September 2, 2025 Series F at $183 billion post-money ($13 billion raised, led by ICONIQ, co-led by Fidelity and Lightspeed; Series F-1 issue price $140.97 on Forge’s table). By the time the $350 billion round was in market, the same write-up put secondary pricing near $300 per share—a large premium to the $183 billion round and still below the incoming $350 billion pre-money. Reliability: medium as a directional Caplight read; not a published trade blotter.
• April 2026, Forge. Augment, citing Forge, said Anthropic’s implied mark had crossed $1 trillion within weeks of the tender close—versus the $350 billion tender and the $380 billion February post-money. That is roughly a 2.6–2.9x premium to the company-set marks. Bloomberg was also reported as saying the company was fielding investor interest around $800 billion outside the tender syndicate. Reliability: medium for “the screen moved above $1 trillion”; low for executable size. Scarcity, not a thick book, drove the print.
• May 28, 2026 primary anchor. Anthropic announced a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation, led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia. Forge’s table shows Series H-1 and H-2 at $589.01 per share. A later secondary write-up that called a “Series H-1 secondary” at $589 was describing the round price, not a separate discount or premium trade. Versus the April tender, this primary was about 2.8x the $350 billion pre-money mark in under two months.
• Early June 2026, Notice. A secondary consensus near $625.26, about 6% above the $589.01 Series H price, with an implied market cap just over $1 trillion, and reported buy interest about 2.9x sell interest. Reliability: low-to-medium; algorithmic consensus, not a guaranteed fill, and published in a promotional investor note.
• June 2026, Caplight (90-day delayed). Caplight’s public page showed a MarketPrice of $848.86 per share “as of June 2026,” with recent months withheld for clients. At the ~1.64 billion share count implied by $965 billion / $589.01, that price would imply well above $1 trillion. Caplight itself labels MarketPrice as an estimate that may be incomplete and is not a price at which you can necessarily transact. An April 2026 Caplight commentary (buyer vs. seller interest, not a price) said Anthropic had about $2 billion of buy interest versus $765 million of sell interest over the prior year, and that Q1 2026 was heavily buyer-dominated.
• July 9–10, 2026. Business Insider, Quartz, and others reported shares changing hands at an implied $1.2 trillion on Caplight, with Caplight CEO Javier Avalos calling Anthropic the most sought-after name the venture secondary market had seen, and Rainmaker Securities’ Glen Anderson saying completed trades were rare because almost no one was selling. That is about a 24% premium to the $965 billion Series H, six weeks later. A separate anecdote in the same news cycle: one shareholder offered stock at $1.15 trillion; a growth fund was said to have bid $1.05 trillion; another buyer saw a $960 billion offer disappear within a day. Reliability: medium that indications clustered around $1.0–1.2 trillion; low that any single anecdote cleared in size. The mechanism is a one-sided book: price is set by the marginal desperate buyer, not by volume.
• September 2, 2026. Benzinga, citing OpenVC’s NYSE OpenVC Unicorn Index via David Shapiro, put an implied valuation at $1.17 trillion, about 21% above the $965 billion primary. Same scarcity story. Reliability: medium as an index indication; not a trade print.
• October 1–3, 2026 screens (conflicting). Moonberg cited a Nasdaq Private Market mark of $1.36 trillion, about $829 per share, 41% above Series H. Stock Analysis, sourcing a price “from Clarity” (formerly Hiive), showed $1,075.57 as of October 3, 2026, a 52-week range of $166.24 to $1,225.88, and an “implied valuation” of about $910 billion—below the last primary—which does not reconcile cleanly with the $1,075 price if the Series H share count is the right denominator. Forge’s own IPO page, updated around October 3, 2026, listed Anthropic Forge Price as “not available” and market activity as “medium.” These three screens cannot all be the clearing price. Reliability: low. Use them as evidence that vendors disagree, not as a single mark.

SPVs and forwards. Anthropic has said it does not permit SPVs to acquire its stock and that transfers into an SPV are void under its transfer restrictions. Forwards—a promise to deliver shares or cash value later—do not put the buyer on the cap table. DefiLlama’s pre-IPO page, as of October 3, 2026, still listed tokenized or SPV-style wrappers (for example Colb and PreStocks) with quoted prices above the Series H share price. Those quotes are not evidence of recognized ownership. Fee stacks on layered SPVs (management fee plus carry at each layer) mean the economic entry price can be materially worse than the headline valuation. Reliability of any SPV or forward “price”: low, and legal recognition is the company’s explicit position that unapproved transfers are void.

Premiums and discounts versus the nearest priced round

Event	Date	Price / valuation	vs. nearest primary	Size	Who	Reliability
FTX block 1	Mar 2024	~$30/share; ~$884M	Roughly in line with ~$15–18B primary area	~29.5M shares	Estate to funds (ATIC, Jane Street, Fidelity, others, some Hiive vehicles)	High on filings; forced seller
FTX block 2	May–Jun 2024	~$30/share; ~$452M+	Same	~15M shares	Estate; G Squared largest named buyer	High on filings
Employee buyback	May 2025	$56.09; $61.5B	Par to Mar 2025 Series E	Undisclosed; $2M cap, 20% max, ≥2 years	Company buys from current/former employees	Medium-high on terms; size unknown
Employee tender	Opened late Feb 2026; closed ~early Apr 2026	$350B pre-money; per-share not disclosed	Par to Series G pre-money; ~8% below $380B post-money	Demand $5–6B; filled amount lower, undisclosed	Outside investors buy from current/former employees, ≥12 months	High on valuation and shortfall; size unknown
Forge indication	~Apr 2026	Implied >$1T	~2.6x+ vs. $380B post / $350B tender	Thin	Anonymous secondary	Medium as a screen
Series H (primary, for anchor)	May 28, 2026	$589.01; $965B post	—	$65B primary	Led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia	High (company)
Notice consensus	Early Jun 2026	~$625; ~6% above $589; ~$1T+	Small premium to Series H	Indication	Notice algorithmic consensus	Low-medium
Caplight / broker	Jul 2026	Implied $1.2T	~24% above $965B	Rare closes	Caplight, Rainmaker anecdotes	Medium on level; low on volume
OpenVC index	Sep 2, 2026	Implied $1.17T	~21% above $965B	Index	OpenVC via Benzinga	Medium as index
NPM / Clarity screens	Oct 2026	$1.36T (~$829) vs. $1,075.57 last price vs. Forge “not available”	Screens disagree	Indications	NPM, Clarity/Hiive, Forge	Low; do not reconcile

What the gap actually means

Company tenders cleared at the last primary (or a small discount to post-money) because Anthropic and its syndicate set the price and employees were not the marginal sellers in size. The April 2026 shortfall is the cleanest evidence: at $350 billion, buyer capital exceeded employee supply. Within weeks, revenue run-rate disclosures and outside bids repriced the story, and by July the only shares that moved were moving near $1.2 trillion because holders would not sell into an expected IPO. That is not proof the company is “worth” $1.2 trillion. It is proof that a one-sided book with transfer restrictions, ROFR, and a company that has declared many SPV and forward structures void will print optimistic indications on tiny volume.

For anyone trying to buy or underwrite this:

• The only prices with real eligibility rules and a company on the other side are the May 2025 buyback (par, tight caps, company cash) and the spring 2026 tender (par to pre-money, employees rationed supply). Both are closed.
• Platform marks from Forge, Caplight, Hiive/Clarity, EquityZen, Notice, and NPM are delayed, algorithmic, or anecdotal. They routinely disagree by hundreds of billions. Minimums on the major venues are roughly $25,000–$100,000+ for hot names, with fees that can run several percent per side, and ROFR or board consent can kill the trade after you have committed.
• SPV and forward “access” is the product Anthropic has specifically said it will not recognize. A buyer in those structures is underwriting counterparty and legal risk, not Claude equity.
• The next real liquidity print, if the August 2026 discussions hold, is an IPO secondary whose size, sellers, and lockups are still unset—against banker talk that has ranged from about $1.5 trillion to above $2 trillion, far above every completed employee sale.

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Recent Findings Supplement (October 2026)

No new employee tender offers, company buybacks, or large-scale secondary sales have been reported since the April 2026 tender (published details after April 3, 2026, primarily reference that earlier event or ongoing platform activity).[1][2]

The April tender (launched around February, closed early April) was priced at a $350 billion pre-money valuation (matching the February 2026 Series G primary round; ~$380 billion post-money including the $30 billion raised). Outside investors bought shares from eligible current/former employees (minimum 12 months tenure); up to $5–6 billion was lined up in demand, but actual volume fell short due to limited employee participation as holders retained shares ahead of a potential IPO. The total transacted amount was not publicly disclosed but was below the targeted range.[3][4]

This represented a significant discount to subsequent primary and secondary pricing amid rapid revenue growth and IPO anticipation. No comparable new tender or buyback activity appears in July–October 2026 reporting.

Secondary-market indications on platforms (Forge, Caplight, Hiive/Clarity, EquityZen, etc.) show strong premiums to the May 28, 2026 Series H primary round ($965 billion post-money, ~$589/share), driven by scarcity and IPO expectations rather than high transaction volume.[5][6]

• July 2026 (primarily Caplight data reported July 9): Shares trading at an implied ~$1.2 trillion valuation (roughly 24% premium to the $965 billion primary). Caplight CEO described Anthropic as “the most sought-after company the venture secondary market has ever seen.” Actual completed trades remained rare due to very limited seller supply; Rainmaker Securities reported similar ~$1.2 trillion levels in sparse transactions. This marked a ~550% year-over-year increase and a flip ahead of OpenAI (~$908 billion on the same platform).[7][8][9]
• September 2026: OpenVC Unicorn Index implied ~$1.17 trillion as of September 2 (~21% premium to the May primary). High buyer demand met with holder reluctance ahead of IPO.[10]
• As of early October 2026 (Clarity/Hiive platform via stockanalysis.com, October 3 data): Last price ~$1,075.57/share (implied valuation in the ~$910 billion range on some calculations, though 52-week high reached $1,225.88/share). Forge and other platforms note medium activity but limited or no direct facilitation without company approval; indicative prices unavailable or sparse in some reports.[11][6]

These platform marks are indicative or based on limited matched trades/SPV interests and carry low liquidity/transferability risk—Anthropic has explicitly warned that unauthorized sales/transfers (including via certain platforms, SPVs, or forwards) are void and not recognized on its books.[12]

SPV, forward-contract, and synthetic pricing (e.g., crypto perpetuals) implies even higher valuations but carries substantial reliability and legal risks. September 2026 reports noted crypto perpetual futures (Hyperliquid and others, e.g., Binance ANTHROPIC/USDT) pricing the company at ~$2 trillion (or higher in some prints), more than double the May primary. These are purely synthetic derivatives with no actual share ownership or delivery rights. Company policy prohibits SPVs and unauthorized forwards; any such structures risk being void.[13][14]

IPO-related developments (August–September 2026) include discussions of potential insider/secondary sales in the offering itself, though no execution details have emerged. Reports indicated consideration of allowing existing shareholders (employees/early investors) to sell alongside new shares in a potential $1.5 trillion (or higher, up to $2 trillion target) IPO, paired with extended lockups for some holders. The company confidentially filed for IPO in June 2026, with targets shifting toward October/November 2026 (or pre-Thanksgiving). No priced secondary component has been confirmed.[15][16]

Key implications and caveats: Secondary prices reflect extreme scarcity and forward-looking IPO hype (revenue run-rate cited up to $65 billion in some reports) more than cleared market volume. Liquidity remains very low; most holders appear to be waiting for the IPO. All secondary data should be treated as estimated/indicative with limited reliability for large positions. No updates contradict the April tender details or introduce new priced employee liquidity events after mid-2026. For the most current platform quotes, direct verification on approved channels (subject to company approval) would be required, as unauthorized routes carry high risk of invalidation.