Lightspeed Venture Partners is trying to raise about $600 million through a secondary process that would let the firm make a fresh commitment to Anthropic PBC while extending its ownership of OpenAI and four other prized startups, according to people familiar with the matter. The San Francisco-headquartered Anthropic sits at the center of the maneuver, internally code-named Project Mercury, which bundles new capital for the Claude maker alongside older stakes the firm does not want to let go of.
The plan, first reported by Bloomberg, would move assets out of two Lightspeed funds — Select V and Opportunity II — along with a separately managed account, and route them into a continuation vehicle rather than selling them off outright. Bloomberg's Preeti Singh reports that people familiar with the matter described the deal as an effort to hold onto winners the firm still believes have room to run, even as it works to return cash to longtime backers.
Beyond OpenAI, the continuation fund is expected to include physical security provider Verkada, HR platform Rippling, AI startup Reflection AI, and enterprise search company Glean, according to a report from Binance. Coller Capital is serving as the lead buyer on the transaction, with Swiss bank UBS advising, per a separate account from KuCoin.
Why Anthropic Shares Are So Hard to Come By
Lightspeed's push for fresh Anthropic exposure comes as shares of the company have become nearly impossible to buy. Secondary market trading pushed Anthropic's implied valuation to $1.2 trillion in July, a 550% jump from a year earlier, driven by early investors and employees holding onto their equity ahead of an expected public offering, according to Tech Funding News. That scarcity has made new commitments, rather than open-market purchases, one of the few remaining ways for a firm like Lightspeed to add to its position.
Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H round in May at a $965 billion post-money valuation, with its annual run-rate revenue crossing $47 billion that same month, per data cited by Augment Markets. Lightspeed has a long relationship with the company, having first invested in early 2023 when Anthropic had fewer than 100 employees and no public product, and later co-led Anthropic's $3.5 billion Series E round as its largest investor in March 2025.
OpenAI, the other headline asset in Project Mercury, has followed its own steep trajectory. The company completed a funding round at an $852 billion post-money valuation in March, with secondary market share indications holding near $908 billion by mid-2026 as competition for AI foundation model equity intensified, according to Augment Markets figures. Hoodline previously reported on the intensity of that secondary trading in a stock tsunami hitting San Francisco tech late last year.
A Liquidity Squeeze Reshaping Venture Capital
Project Mercury reflects a broader shift underway across the venture industry. Cumulative cash distributions from U.S. venture funds to limited partners remained negative by an estimated $197 billion from 2022 through early 2026, a stretch of weak IPO and M&A exit markets that has left many funds unable to return money to their backers, according to a report from I by IMD. Continuation vehicles like the one Coller Capital is leading offer a workaround: GPs can cash out legacy investors while keeping their highest-conviction holdings intact.
That structure has become increasingly common. Global transaction volume for general-partner-led continuation vehicles surged 53% year-over-year to $115 billion in 2025, representing nearly half of the entire $240 billion secondary market, per figures from Key Capital. Lightspeed itself closed more than $9 billion in new capital commitments across six funds in December, including $1.8 billion for Select VI and $3.3 billion for Opportunity III, pushing its total assets under management beyond $40 billion and its cumulative AI investments past $5.5 billion, according to Venture Capital Journal.
A Firm Betting Its Address on AI
Lightspeed's appetite for AI exposure has also reshaped its physical footprint. The firm signed a 12-year lease in May for more than 42,000 square feet at 149 New Montgomery Street in San Francisco's SoMa district, relocating its headquarters from Menlo Park's Sand Hill Road to be closer to the city's AI ecosystem, as Hoodline reported in its move from Sand Hill Road to SoMa. That relocation followed other institutional bets on Anthropic's technology, including a $1.5 billion push by Wall Street firms to deploy Claude models into enterprise software that Hoodline detailed in May.
Anthropic's rapid ascent has not come without complications. The company remains tangled in a copyright lawsuit filed by 100 authors in San Francisco federal court, a case Hoodline covered in July, that could shadow the company's finances as it edges toward a potential public offering. It is not yet clear how or whether Project Mercury will close, and the terms described by people familiar with the matter could still shift before any deal is finalized.
