Anthropic Is Reportedly Worth $965 Billion. Here Are 3 Ways to Play It.

Based on the price that private equity firms paid to buy stakes in Anthropic during its May funding round, the AI start-up's valuation is close to $1 trillion. That's pretty impressive for a company that's still months away from its initial public offering (IPO). So far, Anthropic has only taken the first steps on the road to bringing its shares to the public market, where retail investors will be able to buy them. However, you don't have to wait that long if you want your portfolio to have some exposure to the company behind the popular Claude AI large language model.

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Buy shares right before the IPO

Brokerage companies like Robinhood and SoFi receive pre-IPO shares for many companies, and give their customers some time before the IPO to load up on those stocks.

This program has only been going on for a few years. Most notably, it allowed some retail investors to buy Space Exploration Technologies (or SpaceX for short) at the IPO price of $135 per share instead of watching the stock soar from the sidelines.

Not every SpaceX pre-IPO share order was executed. It's truly a luck of the draw, and Anthropic isn't even guaranteed to offer pre-IPO shares to brokerages to sell to regular retail investors.

Accredited investors can buy in without waiting for pre-IPO shares, but there are more hurdles. To become an accredited investor, you typically need to demonstrate a net worth above $1 million (excluding your primary residence) or more than $200,000 in annual income. And to buy into a privately held company, you will also have to make a large investment that will remain illiquid for a predetermined period.

Secondary markets are one avenue, but shares are scarce. Accredited investors can also access venture funds that may have some exposure to Anthropic.

Invest in companies that own Anthropic stock

Anthropic received early investments from several tech giants, and the values of their positions have surged. Alphabet and Amazon are two notable businesses that have sizable stakes in Anthropic, so buying their shares lets you profit as those stakes gain value.

This approach doesn't give you pure exposure to Anthropic, of course, so investors must assess the entire business. Luckily, Alphabet and Amazon have both been expanding their cloud platforms and gaining market share in multiple industries.

Technically, many index funds also have some exposure to Anthropic since Alphabet and Amazon make up a considerable portion of the value of the large-cap Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes. However, putting money into an index fund is not the best way to maximize your exposure to Anthropic.

Any company with meaningful exposure to Anthropic can expect to rally if the tech giant delivers a strong IPO. Alphabet and Amazon are both up year to date as AI tailwinds and their Anthropic investments contribute to their rallies.

Follow the money

The final way to get exposure to Anthropic is to capitalize on how the company is spending money. For instance, it recently signed a 20-year agreement to lease compute capacity from Bitcoin miner TeraWulf for $19 billion. The deal comes to almost $1 billion per year and includes 401 megawatts of critical information technology (IT) load.

Anthropic will have to spend more money leasing capacity from AI data center companies to support the growing use of Claude AI. It appears to have its eyes set on Australia, which has generated speculation that it may make a deal with data center provider Iren for additional megawatts.

Anthropic is also spending heavily on AI chips, memory chips, cloud platforms, and other resources. Its money will continue to flow in those directions as Claude gains market share and Anthropic needs more energy and computing capacity to handle AI demand. The landmark five-year, $200 billion deal it signed with Alphabet in May for cloud computing capacity and AI chips demonstrates how high this type of spending can go.

Many companies with exposure to AI infrastructure stand to benefit from Anthropic's IPO and overall success. Construction companies, HVAC businesses, and optical cable companies are some of the smaller infrastructure players that are also set to benefit. Anthropic's IPO will also make it easier for the company to raise more capital, which could lead to higher spending across all of these key areas.

Marc Guberti has positions in Iren. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.