Locked Out of Anthropic, Investors Bid Its Shadow Stock Up 16x

Last Thursday, a new ticker appeared on the New York Stock Exchange: VCX.

It is actually a fund. Inside it are shares of Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and other companies. Anthropic makes up 21% of the holdings, and OpenAI accounts for 10%.

These companies share one thing in common: none of them are publicly listed. Ordinary investors cannot buy their stock.

VCX is one of the very few instruments on the market that allows retail investors to indirectly hold a stake in Anthropic.

Its net asset value is $19 per share. On its first day of trading, it opened at $42, surged to $125 intraday, and closed at $76. By the fourth trading day, it hit an intraday high of $315, triggering circuit breakers twice.

In just four days, the price climbed from $19 to $315.

Investors were paying 16 times the fund's actual asset value, merely because Anthropic is inside it.

A month ago, Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation, making it the second-largest funding round globally this year. Its annualized revenue stands at $14 billion. But the company is not public. It has no ticker symbol. You will not find it in any brokerage.

If investors cannot get exposure to the real thing, they go after the closest replacement. Right now, VCX is that replacement for Anthropic, or really, for AI FOMO.

Why Is It So Expensive?

VCX is not a conventional fund.

With an ordinary fund, if you think it is overpriced, you can wait for it to come down, because the fund manager can issue new shares and expand supply. VCX is a closed-end fund. Its share count was locked at listing and will not increase.

More critically, the vast majority of existing shares cannot be sold. Investors who bought in before February 20 are subject to a six-month lock-up and will not be able to trade until September. VCX has over 100,000 investors, but the number of shares actually circulating on the open market is a tiny fraction of the total.

What does this mean? Enormous demand, minimal supply. Even a small amount of buying pressure can distort the price beyond recognition.

So that 16x premium is not really pricing the fund. It is pricing how many people want exposure to Anthropic and how narrow the door is. And that hunger was not manufactured by VCX itself.

Over the past decade, a structural shift has taken place in the tech industry: the best companies are going public later and later, or not going public at all.

When Facebook went public in 2012, its valuation was $104 billion, already an astronomical figure at the time. Today, Anthropic's private valuation is more than three times Facebook's IPO price, yet until recently, the company did not even have a clear plan to list.

OpenAI is valued at $500 billion and is also not public. SpaceX IPO rumors have circulated for over a year with no confirmed date.

A decade ago, a company at this scale would have already rung the bell on the NYSE. Now they do not need to. The private market can supply virtually unlimited capital, without quarterly earnings pressure and without dealing with retail investors or short sellers.

For founders, this is a rational choice. For ordinary investors, it means the fastest-growing companies in history are behind glass, visible but untouchable.

VCX was originally scheduled to list on March 9 but was delayed ten days due to the Iran conflict. During those ten days, nothing changed. Anthropic did not appreciate or depreciate. The fund's holdings did not move by a single share. But the delay itself brewed ten more days of anticipation.

When the fund finally listed, all the demand that had been bottled up for ten days squeezed through an extremely narrow channel.

Bought in Private, Sold in Public

VCX is not the only way to access shares of unlisted companies.

But before discussing the alternatives, there is a more fundamental question: Anthropic is not public, so how did a publicly traded fund obtain its shares in the first place?

The answer lies in the private market itself.

Large private companies conduct funding rounds every few months, from Series A through Series G, each bringing in new investors. Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G last month, with participants ranging from GIC to Sequoia to Goldman Sachs. These rounds are typically open only to institutional investors, with minimums starting in the tens of millions of dollars.

But there is a second route.

A company being private does not mean its shares cannot change hands privately. Early employees and angel investors hold equity, and some of them want to cash out early. This has given rise to secondary markets for private companies. They are not public, not transparent, but the transactions are real.

Fundrise began buying on both of these routes in 2022, when private tech valuations had just gone through a steep correction and prices were cheap. Over four years, the firm assembled a portfolio that includes Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX. It then packaged it into VCX, listed it on the NYSE, and suddenly retail investors could buy in as easily as purchasing any stock.

In the same month, at least three similar funds were trading on the NYSE, all selling the same concept:

Taking what was bought through the back door, and selling it through the front.

Robinhood launched a fund called RVI on March 6, priced at $25 per share. Its holdings include Databricks, Revolut, and Ramp, all solid private companies. It fell 11% on its first day, closing at $21.

Destiny Tech100, ticker DXYZ, listed in 2024 and is something of a first mover in this space. It is heavily weighted toward SpaceX, which makes up 16% of its holdings. It only added a small amount of indirect Anthropic exposure in February of this year. Its share price currently sits around $24.

There is also XOVR, the first ETF approved to directly hold private company equity. SpaceX accounts for roughly 21% of its portfolio.

All four funds share similar structures and concepts, and all trade on the same exchange. But their fates have been completely different.

VCX surged 1,500% in four days. RVI broke below its IPO price on day one. DXYZ has been lukewarm.

VCX holds 21% Anthropic and 10% OpenAI. RVI's portfolio contains neither Anthropic nor OpenAI. DXYZ's Anthropic exposure was only recently added and remains minimal.

This tells us something important: the market is not chasing "private company equity" in general. The market is chasing Anthropic.

Whoever is closest to it commands the highest price.

Robinhood's RVI lost precisely because of this. Databricks and Revolut are fine companies, but right now, they are not the name that makes people willing to pay a 16x premium.

Buying a Ticket Before the Door Opens

What are the people who bought VCX at $312 betting on?

They are betting that before the door opens, someone else will be willing to pay an even higher price for a piece of proximity to Anthropic.

But this door will not stay closed forever.

VCX has over 100,000 investors, and the vast majority of their shares are locked up for six months. The lock-up expires on September 19. At that point, a massive wave of shares will flood the market, and supply will shift overnight from extreme scarcity to abundance.

VCX can command a 16x premium partly because it holds Anthropic, and partly because so few shares are available to trade. Once the lock-up expires, the second condition disappears.

There is also a bigger variable.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are all rumored to be targeting IPOs in the second half of 2026 or 2027. Anthropic just raised $30 billion last month at a $380 billion valuation and has already retained Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini to prepare for a public listing. SpaceX's CFO has been in discussions with investors about an IPO since late last year, with a target of mid-year.

Once the real companies go public, their shadows lose their value.

If you could simply buy Anthropic stock on the open market, why would you pay a 16x premium for a fund that holds it indirectly?

Take DXYZ as an example. When it first listed in 2024, it also saw a frenzied rally. Then SpaceX kept delaying its IPO, interest faded, and the stock dropped more than 50% from its peak.

So VCX investors are living through a classic countdown.

What they paid 16x for is not a stake in Anthropic. It is a ticket with an expiration date. When the door opens depends on when Anthropic decides to go public.

Until then, the premium is sustained by scarcity. After that, the premium goes to zero.

But shadow stocks are not an accident.

Every technology wave produces the same anxiety: the most important companies are the ones you cannot buy. In the 2000s, it was Google before its IPO, when Goldman Sachs employees fought internally to secure allocations. In 2020, it was SpaceX, when Silicon Valley's secondary-market brokers became the most sought-after connections overnight.

Now it is AI's turn.

And this time, the anxiety runs deeper. Anthropic and OpenAI may not be profitable right now, but they are rewriting the rules. Because of AI, SaaS stocks have collapsed. Cybersecurity stocks have collapsed. IBM lost $31 billion in market cap in a single day.

What investors see is not just "this company makes a lot of money." It is "if I am not on its side, I might be on the side that gets run over."

The 16x premium on VCX is not entirely pricing a fund. It is pricing that anxiety itself.

The ticket will expire. The premium will fade. But as long as AI keeps accelerating, and as long as the most valuable companies keep their doors closed, people will pay irrational prices for shadows.

Not because shadows are worth that much, but because the feeling of being locked out is too costly.

If you find this helpful, feel free to follow us for future updates. ❤

• X : @blockflow_news
• Telegram: t.me/blockflownews