How to Buy Pre-IPO Shares in Anthropic and OpenAI (And Why You Might Not Want To)

OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the world's fastest-growing AI companies, filed confidential draft S-1 registration statements with the SEC on May 22 and June 1, respectively. Both companies will likely go public in late 2026 or early 2027.

OpenAI was valued at $852 billion after its latest funding round, and it aims to go public with a market cap of $1 trillion. That would be 50 times its annualized revenue run rate of $20 billion at the end of 2025. Anthropic was most recently valued at $965 billion. With a $1 trillion IPO, it would go public at 111 times its $9 billion in annualized revenue at the end of 2025.

Image source: Getty Images.

Both companies only plan to float 5%-10% of their shares in their IPOs. That limited supply, along with the market hype and pent-up demand for their shares, could cause both stocks to immediately skyrocket -- even though they're already pricey relative to their growth rates.

Therefore, some investors might be looking for ways to invest in Anthropic and OpenAI before their market debuts. Let's see how you can do that -- and why the risks might outweigh the potential rewards.

How can you invest in OpenAI and Anthropic right now?

If you're an accredited investor with a net worth of over $1,000,000 (excluding your primary residence) or an annual income of over $200,000, you can buy shares from employees and early investors on secondary marketplaces like Forge Global, Hiive, and EquityZen.

Companies like Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) have also launched shell companies, called special-purpose vehicles (SPVs), to acquire private shares of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Rather than going through secondary marketplaces, investors can buy shares (or tokenized versions) of these SPVs to gain indirect exposure to these hot companies before they go public. Some SPVs even invest in shares of other SPVs instead of buying the actual private shares.

However, OpenAI and Anthropic are both aggressively cracking down on these secondary sales, and they're legally allowed to void any of those transactions. Therefore, any shares purchased through secondary marketplaces or SPVs could become worthless before their IPOs.

Another way to invest in OpenAI and Anthropic without dealing with sketchy secondary shares or SPVs is through a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) -- like the ARK Venture Fund (NASDAQMUTFUND: ARKVX) and Fundrise Innovation Fund (NYSE: VCX) -- that owns institutional SPVs which the underlying companies directly back.

OpenAI and Anthropic can't void these shares, but market hype about these companies can significantly inflate the share prices of these funds. If more investors pile into these funds as a proxy trade on OpenAI and Anthropic before their IPOs, their share prices could rise well above their actual net asset value (NAV) per share. But when OpenAI and Anthropic go public, those investors will dump those funds and buy the actual shares.

Anyone who invested in the proxy funds without checking the NAV would be left holding the bag. That's precisely what happened to many investors who bought the ETFs that held SPVs in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) before its explosive market debut.

Why it's smarter to wait until OpenAI and Anthropic go public

OpenAI and Anthropic will inevitably attract lots of attention when they go public, but that euphoria will fade once the market focuses on their steep valuations and net losses. Both companies could face unfavorable comparisons to AI infrastructure companies, which are absorbing the capital that OpenAI and Anthropic are spending to expand their platforms, and tough questions about how they can keep up with their open-source competitors in China.

Once the market prices in those challenges, OpenAI and Anthropic will likely drop back to their IPO prices (or lower), giving investors a better chance to buy their shares. That's why I'm not eager to invest in OpenAI and Anthropic before their upcoming market debuts.

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.