As investors scramble to get their hands on shares of AI companies of all stripes, Anthropic this week updated its website to warn investors that a plethora of private and secondary investment platforms that offer access to AI company shares are actually not allowed to do so.
The company named Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive (new listings), Forge Global (new listings), Sydecar and Upmarket as companies not authorized to provide access to buy or sell its shares.
“Any sale or transfer of Anthropic stock, or any interest in Anthropic stock, offered by these companies is void and will not be recognized on our books and records,” the company said. support page is reading.
Reached for comment, Forge Global claimed it was included in error. “We are working with Anthropic to remove Forge’s name from this notification,” the platform told TechCrunch. “Forge does not facilitate trading in the stock of any private company without the express approval of the company.”
Sydecar, meanwhile, said it was acting only in an administrative capacity. “The company does not buy or sell securities or solicit transactions in private companies. In addition, Sydecar requires sponsors to certify that they have reviewed relevant documents regarding the transferability of the shares and that they have the required approvals and consents from the company,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Anthropic’s update comes alongside an increase in the number of investment platforms offering exposure to AI company stocks (and thus their growth) through secondary markets where existing shareholders sell their shares, tokenized securities, special purpose vehicles (SPVs) or secondary market holdings.
The company, rumored to be raising new funding at a $900 billion valuationhas been in high demand, with some secondary market traders telling TechCrunch last month that it’s one of the most “difficult” stocks to market.
“Anthropic is right to take concerns about unauthorized stock sales and investment fraud seriously,” Hiive spokeswoman Dakota Betts said in an emailed statement. “We share these concerns. They are an important reason why Hiive has invested heavily in legal, compliance and due diligence infrastructure since the beginning, and all share transfers facilitated by Hiive are issuer approved.”
In the past year, some crypto companies such as OKX crypto exchangehave created investment products that sell exposure to AI companies. These often take the form of pre-IPO futures, which are derivative instruments that track the value of private companies in secondary markets, but do not offer ownership of actual shares.
SPVs are different from these derivative schemes, offering investors the opportunity to buy shares in an entity that owns at least some stake in Anthropic. This equity could come from a formal investor or could have been acquired when an investor is forced to liquidate its holdings, as happened during the bankruptcy of FTX. In other cases, the equity claim can be completely fraudulent.
Anthropic says both its preferred and common shares are subject to transfer restrictions, meaning any sale or transfer of shares not approved by its board of directors will be considered null and void. According to Anthropic, any third-party platform (specifically SPVs and retail investment companies) that claims to sell its shares directly or using futures contracts is not authorized to do so.
“We do not allow special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to acquire shares in Anthropic and any transfer of shares to an SPV is void under our transfer restrictions,” the company’s blog says. “Offers to invest in Anthropic’s past or future financing rounds through SPVs are prohibited.”
Note: This story has been updated to include comments from Hiive and Sydecar.
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