Investing in Anthropic Stock | How to Buy Pre-IPO Shares (2025)

Anthropic is a leading AI research and service provider. The company’s proprietary LLM AI chatbot is one of the most widely used globally. LLM chatbots have revolutionized the market by streamlining human interactions into simple chat prompts, enabling users to create and research in seconds. Anthropic AI systems can perform tasks traditionally requiring human intervention, including visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and more. Consequently, there’s a strong demand for Anthropic products and stock.

The LLM market is one of the fastest-growing tech sectors, with an expected CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 36.6% from 2024 to 2030. As a leading AI solutions provider, Anthropic is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this growth. Keenly, investors have recognized this stock’s potential, driving demand.

To date, Anthropic hasn’t shared any plans to go public, meaning pre-IPO shares are currently your best option. Additionally, the company has hosted several successful private fundraising rounds, reducing the chances of the firm offering its stock publicly. Here’s how to navigate this situation and acquire some pre-IPO shares of Anthropic.

What is Anthropic?

Anthropic launched in 2021 as AI Safety Lab. The San Francisco-based generative AI startup was the brainchild of Dario and Daniela Amodei, Sam McCandlish, Tom Brown, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark, and Ben Mann. Notably, all of the company’s founders previously worked at OpenAI, the first popular LLM chatbot and Anthropic’s main competitor. This previous work experience helped the team to secure funding from prominent backers and ensure their system’s stability.

Anthropic quickly gained notoriety due to its simplistic interface and powerful capabilities. Currently, Claude is the second most popular AI chatbot ecosystem. It has three modes: Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku. Impressively, anyone can direct the AI system to conduct tasks via chat prompts sent to the cloud system. As such, academics, researchers, businesses, and millions of regular users now rely on these modes to complement their efforts.

A team of researchers, policy experts, and engineers developed Anthropic’s main product, Claude, to provide the public with reliable, interpretable, and innovative AI solutions. All of these factors, plus the company’s transparency helped drive consumer confidence and market positioning.

Historical Funding Rounds

Summary of Uphold Funding:

• Total Funding: Anthropic secured $4.51B across 8 funding rounds
• Largest Round: Anthropic’s largest funding round secured $2.75B on Mar 27, 2024.
• Investors: A total of 36 institutional investors and 8 Angel investors back Entropic
• Latest Round: The latest funding round raised  $2.75B and was a Series E round held on Mar 27, 2024.

Funding Rounds Breakdown:

• 5 Late-Stage rounds
• 2 Early-Stage rounds
• 1 Others round

Key Investors:

Anthropic received backing from Amazon, Google, Qualcomm, Intuit, and Sapphire Ventures, Zoom, Spark Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Google, Microsoft, HOF Capital, Menlo Ventures, Sound Ventures, Pioneer Fund, Wikus Ventures, GG1978, SV Angel, Alphabet, Jaan Tallinn, Dustin Moskovitz, Eric Schmidt, emerging risk.ch, James McClave, and more.

Funding data sourced from Tracxn

Why Invest in Anthropic?

Anthropic provides unique opportunities to investors. It’s one of the top-performing platforms in one of the fastest-growing tech sectors. Additionally, its team is led by a group of established and recognized AI experts who have experience working for the main competitor. This experience helped Anthropic create products that filled gaps in ChatGPT’s offerings, increasing demand further.

Anthropic has Strong Support from Market Leaders

There’s no question that the AI market has been a major disrupting force in the tech industry. Firms like Microsoft and Amazon have invested massive funding into creating in-house systems. They’ve also invested in market leaders, including Anthropic, which has cemented the firm’s position as one of the most respected AI chatbot solution providers.

New Products and Innovation

Anthropic knows that the AI economy is a fast-paced industry that requires constant upgrades and innovation. The company stayed true to this approach, releasing new versions of their LLM and products frequently. Their latest release, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, is their most intelligent and capable AI model to date.

Developer Support

Anthropic provides developers with a suite of tools and a secure API, enabling them to integrate its services into third-party apps and systems. This strategy helps expand the ecosystem and services. It could also lead to the introduction of an app store one day, similar to the ChatGPT offerings.

AI Safety

Anthropic’s focus on AI safety helps it to stand out against the competition. AI systems have a lot of potential for abuse and their effects on society are still being understood. Anthropic continues to put forth research into the matter, sharing its findings with the public. This level of transparency is seen by many as a crucial step in protecting human values and preventing abuse during the AI revolution.

How to Buy Anthropic Pre-IPO Shares

Anthropic remains privately held, meaning that you will need to utilize a specialized approach to get access to shares. Here’s what you need to consider.

1. Pre-IPO Secondary Marketplace

Investors sometimes gain exposure to private companies through secondary marketplaces, which connect accredited investors with early shareholders—such as employees, venture firms, or insiders—looking to sell shares before a company’s IPO.

Pre-IPO investments offer the chance to invest during a company’s high-growth phase, often at lower valuations than in the public markets. However, these opportunities come with important considerations:

• Eligibility: Secondary markets typically require you to be an accredited investor, meaning you must meet certain income or net worth thresholds.

• Liquidity Risk: Private shares are usually illiquid until the company goes public or is acquired, meaning you may need to hold them for several years—or potentially indefinitely.

If you meet the requirements and are comfortable with the risks, several platforms offer access to pre-IPO opportunities:

• Forge Global: One of the largest private stock marketplaces, offering shares in late-stage startups like SpaceX, Stripe, and Databricks. Minimums typically start around $100,000.

• EquityZen: A popular platform allowing accredited investors to buy into private companies with minimums as low as $5,000. Past offerings include companies like Discord and UiPath.

• Rainmaker Securities: A full-service broker that helps source and negotiate private share sales, including opportunities in companies like OpenAI, Stripe, and Palantir.

• Hiive: A newer platform with live bid/ask pricing for hundreds of private companies. Transparent and low-fee, with minimums starting around $25,000.

• MicroVentures: Offers pooled access to late-stage companies through special purpose vehicles (SPVs), including past investments in SpaceX and Instacart.

• EquityBee: Allows investors to fund employee stock option exercises at startups, often at discounted valuations, with minimums around $10,000.

• Augment: A digital-first marketplace showing real-time pricing for pre-IPO shares, targeting tech-savvy investors and offering lower transaction fees.

• StartEngine Private: Launched in late 2023, this platform offers accredited investors access to Regulation D offerings in later-stage, venture-backed companies. In its first nine months, it generated $16.5 million in revenue, with average investments around $32,000

Important: Always perform thorough due diligence and consult a financial advisor before investing in private company shares.

2. Private Equity Firms

Private equity firms gain access to pre-IPO shares during investment rounds. They then offer these shares to high-net-worth accredited investors with a commission. Notably, private equity firms are known to have extra stipulations, including blocking the sale of shares for years in some cases.

3. Employee Equity Sales

Many consider employee equity sales as the best way to acquire pre-IPO shares in Anthropic. This method of acquiring pre-IPO shares requires you to connect with former employees. It’s common for companies to issue shares as part of an incentive package. Notably, this profit-sharing method has become more popular, leading to more pre-IPO share opportunities for investors.

Private Transactions: there are a lot of hoops you will need to jump through to complete a private pre-IPO transaction, including creating specific legal agreements, conducting valuations, and setting in place any limitations on the transfer of the asset.

Brokerage: Brokers will take a lot of the confusion out of the pre-IPO process. These professionals can guide you through each step, ensuring full compliance and avoiding common errors untrained professionals make.

There are several risks that you should consider before jumping into the pre-IPO shares investment arena. Here are the top concerns:

Liquidity Risk

If you are looking for an asset that you can sell right away, pre-IPO shares are not the best option. These investments can include sales and transfer clauses that prevent the transfer of the asset until certain criteria, such as the IPO’s completion. It’s even common for pre-IPO shares to require you to wait years before gaining the ability to sell your assets.

Regulatory Risk

The blockchain market has seen considerable scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. While the technology is far better understood than in its early days, there are still many lawmakers who see it as a threat to the traditional financial system. As such, you need to always consider how new regulations could affect the value of your pre-IPO shares.

Anthropic Pre-IPO Market Risk

Purchasing pre-IPO shares in Anthropic means that you stand behind the project and its team.  The company has secured a reputation for excellence and has previously expressed a desire to go public. However, no concrete data has been provided yet. As such, it’s vital to understand that the blockchain market is an active space that experiences strong fluctuations that could result in a different share value between now and any future IPO launch.

Valuation of Shield AI and Future IPO

Anthropic received a valuation of $15B in 2023, making it one of the most successful AI chatbots and qualifying it as Unicorn status. The company secured this valuation due to its innovative AI services which have found use across multiple industries.

There’s a lot of speculation that Anthropic will decide to go public in the coming years. However, no mention has been made of plans to host an IPO. Notably, the company has the momentum and backing to make this maneuver now if it wants. However, some analysts believe the firm will remain private until it further galvanizes its position in the market. If Anthropic does announce plans to go public, it could drive the price of pre-IPO shares higher than ever.

Many analysts believe that Anthropic could potentially be one of the largest IPOs in recent history. Its backers, who are all industry leaders, have shown their faith in the company and its leadership. As such, anyone holding pre-IPO shares could benefit greatly from this move.

Conclusion

Investing in pre-IPO shares of Anthropic could be a wise maneuver for you. Analysts predict the company will continue to see growth. Recently, it moved into the SLACK building alongside a larger integration, placing it in the heart of Silicon Valley while further demonstrating the company’s commitment to working with the best and brightest across the tech industry.

Be sure to conduct thorough research on Anthropic before making any pre-IPO investment. You need to be aware of the risks to ensure that the stock falls within your risk appetite. It’s recommended that you consult a financial expert as part of this approach. For those who complete these tasks and find Anthropic Pre-IPO shares to meet their needs, there’s a lot of upside potential.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Pre-IPO shares are typically available only to accredited investors and carry significant risk. Always perform thorough due diligence and consult a financial advisor or legal expert before making investment decisions.