Anthropic warns investors about secondary platforms that offer access to its shares

As investors scramble to acquire shares of AI companies of all kinds, Anthropic this week updated its website to warn investors that a large number of private and secondary investment platforms that provide access to shares in AI company are not actually permitted to do so.

The company has named Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive (new offerings), Forge Global (new offerings), Sidecar 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, made by these companies is void and will not be recognized in our books and records,” the company’s support page says.

Reached for comment, Forge Global claimed it had been incorrectly listed. “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 express consent of the company.”

Meanwhile, Sydecar said it was only acting in an administrative capacity. “The company does not buy or sell securities or solicit transactions in any private company. Furthermore, Sydecar requires sponsors to certify that they have reviewed the relevant documents related to the transferability of the shares and that they have the required consents and approvals from the company,” the company said in an email statement.

Anthropic’s update comes alongside an increase in the number of investment platforms offering shares of AI companies (and thus their growth) via secondary markets where existing shareholders sell their shares, “tokenized” securities, special purpose vehicles (SPVs) or secondary market holdings.

Anthropic, which is rumored to be raising new funding at a $900 billion valuation, has been in particular demand, with some secondary market brokers telling TechCrunch last month that it is one of the “hardest” stocks to source.

“Anthropic is right to take concerns about unauthorized stock sales and investment fraud seriously,” Hiive spokeswoman Dakota Bates said in an emailed statement. “We share these concerns. They are a key reason why Hiive has invested heavily in legal, compliance and diligence infrastructure from the beginning, and all share transfers facilitated by Hiive are approved by the issuer.”

Over the past year, some cryptocurrency companies, such as cryptocurrency exchange OKX, have rolled out investment products to sell exposure to AI 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.

SPACs differ from such derivative schemes in that they offer investors the opportunity to purchase shares of an entity that owns at least some stake in Anthropic. These shares can be from a formal investor, or acquired when the investor is forced to liquidate his holdings, as happened during the FTX bankruptcy. In other cases, the claim of ownership rights may be entirely fraudulent.

Anthropic says its preferred and common stock are subject to transfer restrictions, meaning that any sale or transfer of stock not approved by its board of directors will be deemed invalid. According to Anthropic, any third-party platform (specifically SPACs and retail investment firms) that claims to sell its shares directly or using futures contracts is not authorized to do so.

“We do not permit 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 said. “Offers to invest in Anthropic’s past or future financing rounds through a special purpose vehicle are prohibited.”

Note: This story has been updated to include comments from Hiive and Sidecar.