Bloomberg: Investor Sentiment Shifts Toward Anthropic Over OpenAI

Ken Smythe, founder of the investment firm Next Round Capital, appeared on Bloomberg Open Interest to break down an unexpected shift in investor sentiment in artificial intelligence. In his telling, capital is increasingly moving toward Anthropic, while skepticism around OpenAI is growing despite the company's announced $122 billion funding round.

What the investor shift is about

Smythe explains that shares tied to OpenAI are increasingly "flooding the market": holders of existing stakes are looking to lock in gains or reduce exposure by selling on the secondary market. At the same time, in his assessment, investors increasingly see Anthropic as a stronger financial bet. The interview's most striking claim concerns OpenAI's recent $122 billion round. Smythe doubts that this figure reflects a real, sustainable market valuation of the company. In his words, the round "may not be as real as it seems."

Why this matters for AI investing

• The speaker is Ken Smythe, founder of Next Round Capital.
• The venue is the Bloomberg Open Interest program (Bloomberg Tech).
• The key figure is OpenAI's $122 billion funding round.
• The thesis: OpenAI shares are being actively sold on the secondary market, while Anthropic is strengthening its position as a more reliable investment.
• The overall takeaway: the shift of capital toward Anthropic was described as "unexpected" for the market.

The clash of valuations around the two leading AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic, reflects a broader problem in venture and late-stage tech financing in 2026. Giant rounds at ever-higher valuations increasingly raise the question of whether they reflect the underlying value of the business (revenue, margins, durability of its competitive position) or are the product of investor frenzy and a limited supply of shares in the companies at the center of market attention.

What this means for the balance of power in the industry

Investors have long seen Anthropic, the developer of the Claude model family, as a more conservative rival to OpenAI, focused on safety and enterprise customers, while OpenAI bet on a mass-market consumer product in ChatGPT. If Smythe's assessment reflects a broader trend rather than the opinion of a single investor, it may suggest that part of the market is starting to reassess the risks tied to OpenAI's rapidly rising valuation and is looking for more predictable exposure to generative AI through alternative leaders.

It is worth keeping in mind that statements like this in investment media reflect the view of one speaker, not a market consensus. Smythe represents a private investment firm, Next Round Capital, and gives his own assessment, not Bloomberg's official position. Still, the very fact that the "overvaluation" of OpenAI's flagship $122 billion round is being debated in a major business outlet shows that the competition between OpenAI and Anthropic has gone well beyond technological rivalry. It has become a subject of close analysis for investors weighing where capital across the whole AI sector will flow in the coming years.

Rounds worth tens and hundreds of billions of dollars have become a hallmark of the generative AI market in recent years. Against that backdrop, even small shifts in the tone of comments from prominent venture market players can noticeably affect how the relative strength of competing labs is perceived. The key difference between the two companies' business models also plays a role in such assessments: OpenAI has historically bet on broad consumer reach through ChatGPT and related products, while Anthropic puts more emphasis on enterprise and developer customers through its API and the Claude model family. That difference in revenue profile and customer base, apparently, underpins Smythe's argument about the "more reliable financial bet."