As investors scramble to get their hands on shares of AI companies of all kinds, Anthropic this week updated their website to warn investors that a number of private and secondary investment platforms that offer access to AI company shares, in fact, cannot do so.
The company named Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive, Forge Global, Sydecar and Upmarket as companies that are not authorized to provide access to buy or sell their 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 in our books and records,” the company’s blog post reads.
When contacted for comment, Forge Global claimed to have been included in error. “We are working with Anthropic to remove Forge’s name from this alert,” the platform told TechCrunch. “Forge does not facilitate transactions in the stock of any private company without the company’s explicit approval.”
The update is accompanied by an increase in the number of investment platforms that offer exposure to the shares of AI companies (and therefore their growth) through secondary markets where existing shareholders sell their shares, “tokenized” securities, special purpose vehicles (SPVs) or stakes on the secondary market.
Anthropic, rumored to be Raise new financing at a valuation of $900 billion.has especially in demandand some secondary market traders told TechCrunch last month that it’s one of the “hardest” stocks to get your hands on.
Over the past year, some crypto companies, such as OKX crypto exchangeThey have promoted investment products that sell exposure to artificial intelligence companies. These often take the form of pre-IPO perpetual futures contracts, which are derivative instruments that track the value of private companies in secondary markets but do not offer actual share ownership.
SPVs are different from those derivative systems and offer investors the opportunity to purchase shares of an entity that has at least a stake in Anthropic. This capital could come from an official investor or have been acquired when an investor is forced to liquidate his holdings, as happened during the bankruptcy of FTX. In other cases, the equity claim may be completely fraudulent.
Anthropic says both its common and preferred shares are subject to transfer restrictions, meaning any sale or transfer of shares not approved by its board of directors will be deemed invalid. According to Anthropic, any third-party platforms (specifically SPVs and retail investment companies) that claim to sell their shares directly or through forward contracts are not authorized to do so.
“We do not allow special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to acquire Anthropic shares and any transfer of shares to an SPV is void under our transfer restrictions,” the company blog reads. “Offers to invest in Anthropic’s past or future financing rounds through an SPV are prohibited.”
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