Salesforce Ventures: OpenAI and Anthropic valuations have become too aggressive for the market

The artificial intelligence market has reached a point where investors are paying not only for current growth but for an almost flawless future, and this is starting to look too aggressive even to those who finance tech companies themselves. Salesforce Ventures partner Paul Drews and WestBridge Capital's US head of investments Manthan Shah discussed this assessment on Bloomberg Deals.

The trigger: OpenAI's record round

The trigger was OpenAI's largest funding round ever: the company raised $122 billion from technology corporations, venture funds and private investors. After the deal, OpenAI's valuation rose to $852 billion, while the market values Anthropic at $380 billion. For market participants, these are no longer just two expensive AI companies but new benchmarks for the entire private tech sector. That is why the Salesforce Ventures comment matters: corporate funds and growth investors usually look not only at the hype but also at how quickly an asset can be turned into a durable business.

What "too aggressive valuations" means

When Drews says valuations have become too aggressive, he does not mean the market will necessarily turn down tomorrow. The point is rather that current prices already bake in a near-perfect scenario. Investors assume that generative AI leaders can simultaneously hold their technological edge, scale infrastructure, protect margins and become entrenched in the enterprise as a base layer for development, search, automation and office tasks. At this altitude, it is not enough for companies to simply grow faster than the market. They need to show that growth can be sustained for years without losing control of the costs of compute, chip procurement, model training and support for increasingly complex products.

The investor mix

The makeup of investors in OpenAI's round is especially telling. The money came not only from tech giants and specialist funds but from a wider pool of capital, including retail investors. This usually means the story has moved beyond the narrow venture community and become a bet on an entire economic cycle. For the company, that is a plus: access to huge amounts of capital lets it add compute faster, build data centers, broaden its range of services and push harder into the enterprise segment. But for valuation it is also extra pressure. The higher the entry price, the less the market is willing to forgive launch delays, questionable monetization, or weaker-than-expected conversion of user interest into real revenue.

A repricing of the entire top of the market

Anthropic's story matters here too, because this is no longer about a single exception but about a repricing of the whole top tier of the AI market. If a company with an alternative model strategy gets a $380 billion valuation, investors are effectively acknowledging that the sector may have several ultra-expensive platforms rather than one absolute winner. This raises overall expectations across the market: startups are expected to have not just strong technology but the ability to build sales channels, retain large customers, embed in company workflows and turn model intelligence into repeatable cash flow.

In other words, AI businesses are still pitched as fast-growing innovators, but at these prices they are already expected to show the discipline of mature tech corporations. For the enterprise software market, this is a separate signal. Salesforce Ventures sits close to the segment where generative AI has to prove practical value not in demos or user enthusiasm but in the concrete economics of deployment.

Corporate customers are willing to pay for automation, faster development, better service and productivity gains, but they also count the cost of running models, integration, security and maintenance carefully. So the debate over high valuations really comes down to a very down-to-earth question: can the market leaders turn technological leadership into predictable cash flows on a scale that justifies hundreds of billions of dollars today, rather than someday.

Conclusion

The conclusion is simple: capital is still ready to back the main winners of the AI race without hesitation, but along with the money comes a new bar for expectations. If OpenAI and Anthropic confirm that their scale and monetization match current prices, the sector will get an even stronger inflow of investment and faster consolidation around a few platforms. If growth turns out to be less linear than the market now assumes, the talk of overheated valuations will quickly become the central theme of the next investment cycle.

In brief:

• Salesforce Ventures partner Paul Drews calls the valuations of AI leaders too aggressive, even for tech investors.
• OpenAI raised $122 billion, and its valuation rose to $852 billion; the market values Anthropic at $380 billion.
• If scale and monetization are confirmed, the sector will receive an inflow of investment; otherwise, overheating will become the central topic.