The Anthropic IPO is Almost Here. What Can Investors Learn from SpaceX?

There’s about to be a new kid on the block. 

Anthropic is expected to go public in the coming weeks at a valuation of about $2 trillion, making it one of the hottest IPOs ever. Investors can get early access through ETFs and other vehicles, but they should vet their chosen fund carefully. SpaceX’s June debut, with a record-breaking $1.77 trillion valuation, holds a few lessons for advisors. 

“Know what the heck you’re buying, number one. Know what it’s actually worth, number two,” said David Shapiro, CEO of OpenVC. SpaceX briefly hit $201.80 per share after the IPO but has since declined, now trading at about $150. “It shook out to where the sophisticated investors were holding it pre-IPO. That means if you bought it in one of these closed structures with a significant premium, you’re actually probably underwater,” Shapiro said. “It goes to show it’s really, really important for folks to have an innate understanding of where the value of these companies sit ahead of that IPO.”

Watered Down

A private company’s weight in an ETF can be diluted as more investors pile in, since issuers can’t always acquire enough shares to keep pace. “This is what was happening with XOVR, that people were getting so excited they were buying for their SpaceX exposure,” said Athanasios Psarofagis, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “But as more people came into it, the SpaceX weight basically went down to nothing.” That issuer, ERShares, increased its SpaceX holdings after the surge in flows diluted its prior position.

Several ETFs already carry Anthropic exposure, per Bloomberg data: 

• The Tema Photonics and Optical ETF (LAZR) has the most, at about 15%, followed by the Alger Concentrated Equity ETF (CNEQ), with over 5%. 
• The Alger 35 ETF (ATFV), the KraneShares Public-Private AI & Technology ETF (AGIX), and the iShares A.I. Innovation and Tech Active ETF (BAI) each hold between 1% and 2%.
• The T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Equity ETF (TCAF) and Technology ETF (TTEQ) both hold less than 1%. 

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Investor interest in the Anthropic IPO may be muted because of the cultural hype around SpaceX and because investors’ portfolios are already AI-heavy, said Jack Shannon, a principal of equity strategies at Morningstar. “SpaceX does have a big part of the business that’s not directly tied to AI, whereas Anthropic is obviously all AI, and people already have that,” Shannon said. “But then again, clearly it looks like it might be on track for the biggest IPO raise ever.”