Anthropic is in the spotlight, has OpenAI already changed its approach?
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As the AI competition enters a white-hot stage, OpenAI is facing dual pressures of a cooling secondary market and intensifying competition from rivals. Its series of countermeasures has also sparked external doubts about its strategic direction.
According to media reports on Tuesday, OpenAI's stock has evidently lost its appeal in the secondary market. The founder of Next Round Capital revealed that in recent weeks, about six institutional investors have sought to sell around $600 million worth of OpenAI shares, whereas these shares would usually be snatched up within days last year, now they are met with little interest.
At the same time, Anthropic’s valuation in the secondary market is more than 50% higher than its last funding round, with capital rapidly flowing to OpenAI’s biggest competitor.
Just as demand cooled in the secondary market, OpenAI announced the approximately $250 million acquisition of tech podcast TBPN and lowered ChatGPT subscription prices, in an attempt to boost the growth narrative. However, these moves did not fully stabilize market confidence and instead sparked widespread discussion as to whether OpenAI has shifted its strategic focus.
Secondary Market "Two Extremes": OpenAI Cools, Anthropic Premium
The direction of capital flows in the secondary market is providing an intuitive thermometer for this AI race.
According to the founder of Next Round Capital, the current market bid for OpenAI is about $765 billion, about 10% lower than its previous peak of $850 billion.
In contrast, Anthropic’s secondary market bid has risen to around $600 billion, more than 50% higher than its last funding round. OpenAI stated that it does not recognize or participate in the above secondary market transactions.
Notably, during the same period, investors officially committed $122 billion in new capital to OpenAI, corresponding to a valuation (including fundraising) of $852 billion. This means there is a significant valuation divergence between the primary and secondary markets—while institutional investors are still willing to pay a high premium in the primary market, in the more liquid secondary market, sellers are finding it difficult to locate buyers.
Podcast Acquisition: PR Remedy or Strategic "Deviation"?
OpenAI’s decision to acquire TBPN reflects a high level of anxiety within the company regarding its public relations crisis.
According to The Information, the deal was led by OpenAI AGI deployment business CEO Fidji Simo. TBPN is a daily live technology podcast hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, known in the industry as the "SportsCenter of Tech." After the acquisition, the two hosts will retain complete creative and editorial independence, and the program format will remain unchanged but receive more resource support.
Sources revealed that Simo got the idea after OpenAI experienced several PR blunders in recent months—including mishandling a lawsuit over ChatGPT allegedly inducing user self-harm, and CEO Sam Altman’s comment on a late-night talk show that he didn’t know “how to raise kids without ChatGPT,” which drew criticism both inside and outside the company. Simo said in an internal memo, “Standard communication manuals don’t apply to us. We’re not an ordinary company.”
However, the timing of the deal is quite delicate. Just before the acquisition was announced, Simo had warned in an all-hands meeting that OpenAI could no longer pursue distracting “side quests” and promptly halted the video generation tool Sora. Some OpenAI employees initially thought the TBPN acquisition was a belated April Fool’s joke. AI researcher Gary Marcus bluntly criticized on social media, saying OpenAI "spending $250 million on an 18-month-old tech podcast is likely an attempt to control public opinion."
Price Cuts & Expansion: Hedging Competition with Scale
Alongside the TBPN acquisition, OpenAI is also accelerating its consumer-side scale expansion.
OpenAI is rolling out the low-price subscription plan ChatGPT Go to more countries. Priced at about $8 per month in the US—around 60% cheaper than the $20 ChatGPT Plus plan—it offers extended access to GPT-5.3, higher message limits, more file upload functions, image generation, and longer memory capabilities.
Behind this pricing strategy is the rapid popularity of Anthropic’s programming tool Claude Code within the developer community, which is narrowing the revenue gap with OpenAI. OpenAI still needs to directly compete with Anthropic in the key tracks of advertising monetization and AI programming, and whether these two businesses can truly scale will be crucial indicators of the effectiveness of Simo’s strategy.
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