To Get a Piece of Anthropic, Retail Investors Are Open to Big Risks

(Bloomberg) -- Brian Smith has been trying every avenue he can find to get exposure to Anthropic's stock ahead of its blockbuster initial public offering.

The 66-year-old California retiree spread money across eight brokerages and may request hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of shares – about 30% of his net worth – in the artificial intelligence giant, which he hopes to sell as soon as they begin trading.

He has also put $7,000 into two high-fee, difficult-to-trade funds that claim to have early access to private shares of both Anthropic and OpenAI. The recent calls from AI industry leaders to slow the development of the technology have done little to dim Smith's enthusiasm as Anthropic moves toward its public offering.

Smith is chasing this strategy despite the rough ride he went through before the IPO of SpaceX. During the spring, Smith had what appeared, at one point, to be more than $300,000 in another closed-end fund that promised access to private company shares. Because of lockups and technical problems, by the time he was able to sell his stake in the fund, he only made around $43,000.

The potential riches in store with the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs make those frustrations — and the broader concerns surrounding AI — fade into the background.

"I know it's risky and some people might think it's crazy," said Smith. "It seems like it's a once in a long time opportunity, and the chance of losing money on an Anthropic IPO is very low."

Smith is one of a growing number of individual investors looking for access to Anthropic and OpenAI after getting their first taste of private-market investing during the frenzy around SpaceX.

Craig Stephens, founder of retail investing site Access IPOs, said his audience grew by 30% around the SpaceX IPO. Many have stuck around as Anthropic and OpenAI head toward the public markets. The push is unfolding even as some of the industry's most prominent figures are calling for a pause in the development of increasingly powerful AI models. Anthropic is expected to sell shares in the coming weeks, and OpenAI has talked about doing its own offering next year.

Retail investors' experiences are providing a crash course in what can happen when investments once largely reserved for venture firms, asset managers and the super wealthy are packaged for a broader audience. There are enormous gains for some individual investors, but also lockups, volatile fund prices, opaque ownership structures and confusion over what investors actually own.