People who can’t buy Anthropic have driven its shadow stock to 16x

Shadow demand, real premium

Retail investors bidding for exposure to Anthropic have pushed a closed‑end fund, ticker VCX, to trade at roughly 16 times its net asset value. VCX’s reported net asset value is about $19 a share; on its first day it opened at $42, spiked intraday to $125 and closed at $76, and by the fourth trading day hit $315, triggering volatility halts twice. The fund’s portfolio reportedly includes roughly 21% Anthropic and 10% OpenAI — and it has been reported that Anthropic raised about $30 billion at a roughly $380 billion valuation last month, making the company the scarce prize here.

Why the gap exists

Why pay a 16× premium? Because you can’t buy the owner directly. Anthropic has not listed, and secondary private markets are opaque and restrictive. VCX is a closed‑end vehicle: shares were fixed at launch, and most investors who bought before Feb. 20 face a six‑month lockup that won’t expire until Sept. 19. That squeezes the float. Fundrise built VCX from private secondary purchases of stakes in Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX, then put that basket on the New York Stock Exchange so ordinary investors could “buy” access. Other vehicles — Robinhood’s RVI, Destiny’s DXYZ and the XOVR ETF — offer similar indirect exposure but none currently match the Anthropic weight VCX does. The market is not necessarily bidding for private tech generally; it’s bidding for one name.

What could change

The premium is essentially a bet on scarcity and impatience. When locked shares become tradable in September, supply will flood the market overnight — and the 16× pricing could collapse as quickly as it rose. It has been reported that Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX are considering IPOs in 2026–27 and that Anthropic has engaged Wilson Sonsini to prepare, but those timelines remain unconfirmed and subject to change. More broadly, this episode highlights a structural shift: top founders can stay private longer thanks to abundant private capital, leaving retail investors to chase “shadow” instruments and accept outsized volatility and opaque pricing. Is that a market innovation or a new kind of gatekeeping? Investors are about to find out.