Pre-IPO investing used to be the exclusive domain of venture capitalists, hedge funds, and well-connected insiders. That changed when funds holding private companies began listing on public exchanges, giving everyday investors a way to own shares of companies before they debut. Alexander Green’s “Secret Backdoor to the REAL #1 Tech IPO of 2026” pitch at The Oxford Club is built entirely on this shift, and the two vehicles at its center are Fundrise Venture (VCX) and Ark Venture (ARKVX).

How Retail Investors Get Early Access

The company everyone wants early access to is Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot. Green calls Claude “far and away the best AI on the face of the planet,” and the operating numbers support the enthusiasm. Revenue climbed from about $1 billion in early 2025 to roughly $11.5 billion per quarter, an annualized run-rate near $65 billion as of July, according to Bloomberg. The coding business grew from $500 million to $2.5 billion in five months, and more than 300,000 businesses now use the platform. Anthropic is not yet public, so the only way a retail investor can buy a piece of it is through a fund that already owns shares.

VCX, the listed Fundrise Innovation Fund, is the vehicle Green recommends. It holds Anthropic, Databricks, and OpenAI, and it trades on any brokerage. ARKVX, Cathie Wood’s Ark Venture, is a different structure: an interval fund that holds Anthropic alongside SpaceX and OpenAI, with Anthropic sitting at roughly 4.3 percent of the portfolio as its fourth-largest position, slightly behind OpenAI. We explain the Anthropic technology behind the demand in our piece on Anthropic’s Mythos model.

The Trade-Off

The trade-off in pre-IPO investing is the gap between what a fund owns and what you pay for it. VCX listed in March 2026 near a $19 net asset value, and its estimated net asset value now sits around $25 to $30, yet the shares trade near $41, a premium of 30 to 40 percent. That premium is the price of early access, and it can vanish once the underlying companies go public and the scarcity disappears.

ARKVX handles this differently. Because it is an interval fund, it prices at net asset value rather than at whatever premium the market assigns, which makes it a more honest reflection of what the holdings are worth. But that honesty comes with its own costs: a 2.9 percent annual fee, a $500 minimum investment, and quarterly redemption caps that limit how much you can withdraw at once, typically 5 percent per quarter. You cannot panic-sell an interval fund the way you can a listed closed-end fund.

Other Ways to Reach the Names

There are quieter paths to the same exposure. SK Telecom holds an Anthropic stake that has grown from around $100 million to more than $2 billion. Amazon and Alphabet hold meaningful positions in Anthropic as well, at roughly 7 percent and 4 percent of its enterprise value respectively. Then there are the exchange-traded funds with small Anthropic weightings, like the KraneShares Public-Private AI and Tech ETF, and the Private Shares Fund. For a sense of how these AI names sit alongside public tech leaders, see our guide to the best AI stocks.

Pre-IPO investing through listed funds is a genuine advance for retail access, but it is not a free lunch. VCX asks you to pay a premium today, while ARKVX asks you to accept fees and liquidity limits. Both are legitimate, and both give you something you could not get before: a brokerage-accessible share of Anthropic, Databricks, and OpenAI before their public debuts.

Why the Demand Is So Strong

The reason funds holding Anthropic command such premiums comes down to the gap between the company’s scale and its availability. Claude now draws roughly 350 million monthly active users, a large number in absolute terms even though it trails ChatGPT’s more than one billion weekly users. Anthropic’s revenue has climbed from about $1 billion in early 2025 to an annualized run-rate near $65 billion, and the pitch floats an IPO target of $2 trillion with talk of a “10x by year’s end.” Those are the sorts of numbers that make investors eager to get in before the listing, and that eagerness is exactly what pushes fund premiums higher.

The September 29, 2026 IPO-announcement clock adds urgency. A hard date, even a soft one, focuses demand, because investors fear being late to a name that could re-rate the moment it goes public. That psychology is real, and it is part of why the premium exists in the first place.

But urgency is also the thing to be most careful about. The premium you pay for early access is only justified if the eventual IPO prices Anthropic high enough to absorb the markup. If the listing comes in below the level the fund’s price already implies, the premium compresses and early buyers in the fund can lose money even as Anthropic itself succeeds. Understanding that distinction is the difference between a disciplined position and a reaction to a clock.

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