People who can't buy Anthropic have driven its shadow stocks up to 16 times.

Author: David｜Deep Tide TechFlow

Last Thursday, a new stock was added to the NYSE, ticker VCX.

It’s actually a fund. The fund holds shares in companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX. Among them, Anthropic accounts for 21%, and OpenAI for 10%.

These companies have one thing in common: they are not publicly listed, so ordinary people cannot buy their stocks.

VCX is currently one of the few instruments allowing ordinary investors to indirectly hold shares of Anthropic.

Its net asset value is $19 per share. On the first day of trading, the opening price was $42, reaching $125 intraday, and closing at $76. On the fourth trading day, the intraday high hit $315, triggering two circuit breakers.

In four days, from $19 to $315.

Investors are essentially paying 16 times the actual asset value to buy this fund. Not because the fund manager is particularly skilled, but because it contains Anthropic.

A month ago, Anthropic raised $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion, making it the second-largest funding round globally this year. Annual revenue is $14 billion. But it’s not listed, has no stock ticker, and you can’t find it in any brokerage search.

When you can’t buy the main company, you go for the shadow. VCX is currently the shadow of Anthropic, or the shadow of AI FOMO.

Why is it so expensive?

VCX is not a traditional fund.

In a typical fund, if you think it’s too expensive, you can wait for it to fall because the fund manager can issue more shares, making supply elastic. VCX is a closed-end fund; its shares are locked in at listing and won’t increase.

More importantly, most shares cannot be sold at all. Investors who bought before February 20 are locked in for six months, until September, before they can trade. VCX has over 100,000 investors, but only a small portion of the shares are actually tradable now.

What does this mean? There are many buyers, but very few shares available. A small amount of buying can push the price into distortion.

So that 16x premium actually reflects “how many people want to get close to Anthropic, and how narrow the door is.” But this kind of hunger isn’t created by VCX itself.

Image: Fundrise’s top 10 holdings in VCX

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

In 2012, Facebook went public with a valuation of $104 billion, which was astronomical at the time. Today, Anthropic’s private valuation is more than three times Facebook’s IPO valuation, yet it has no clear plans to go public;

OpenAI is valued at $500 billion but remains private. SpaceX has been rumored to IPO for over a year, but no definite date has been announced.

Ten years ago, a company reaching this size would have already gone public on NYSE. Now, they don’t need to. The private market can provide almost unlimited funding, without quarterly report pressures or dealing with retail investors and short-sellers.

For founders, this is a rational choice. For ordinary investors, it means the fastest-growing companies in history are now only visible through glass.

VCX was originally scheduled to go public on March 9, but was delayed by ten days due to the Iran war. During those ten days, nothing changed—Anthropic’s price stayed the same, and the fund’s holdings remained untouched. But the delay itself built up ten more days of anticipation.

When it finally listed, all the demand pent up during those ten days rushed into a very narrow window.

Not all shadows are valuable

There are other ways to access stocks of private companies besides VCX.

But before discussing those, a more fundamental question: Anthropic is not listed. How does a publicly traded fund get its shares?

The answer is through the back door.

Large private companies raise funding every few months, from Series A to G, bringing new investors in each round. Anthropic just closed a $30 billion Series G last month, with investors including GIC, Sequoia, Goldman Sachs, and others. These rounds are usually only open to institutional investors, with minimum investments often in the millions.

There’s also a second route.

Just because a company isn’t listed doesn’t mean its shares can’t be traded privately. Early employees and angel investors hold shares, and some want to cash out early. This creates a secondary market for private companies—unpublicized, opaque, but real transactions.

Fundrise has been buying through these two channels since 2022, when private tech valuations had just experienced a sharp decline, making prices cheaper. Over four years, they built a portfolio including Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX. Then they packaged it into VCX, listed on NYSE, allowing ordinary people to buy in as if it were stocks.

In the same month, at least three other similar funds traded on NYSE, all based on the same concept:

Buying through the back door, selling through the front.

Robinhood launched a fund called RVI, listed on March 6, with an issue price of $25. Its holdings include Databricks, Revolut, Ramp—all good private companies. On the first day, it fell 11%, closing at $21.

Destiny Tech100, ticker DXYZ, is scheduled to go public in 2024, a pioneer in this space. It heavily invests in SpaceX, with a 16% stake. In February, it added a small exposure to Anthropic indirectly. Now, its share price hovers around $24.

Another is XOVR, the first ETF approved to hold private company shares directly, with SpaceX making up about 21%.

Four funds, similar structures, similar concepts, all traded on the same exchange. But their fates are very different.

VCX surged 1500% in four days. RVI broke on its first day. DXYZ remained lukewarm.

VCX holds 21% of Anthropic and 10% of OpenAI. RVI’s holdings include neither. DXYZ’s Anthropic exposure was added recently and is very small.

This shows that, at least for now, the market isn’t really competing for “private company shares.” It’s competing for Anthropic.

Who is closer to them is worth more.

Robinhood’s RVI lost because of this. Databricks and Revolut are good companies, but clearly, they aren’t the names people are willing to pay 16 times premium for right now.

Shadows have a shelf life

What are people betting on when they buy VCX at $312?

They’re betting that before the door opens, someone will be willing to pay even more to get Anthropic.

But this door won’t stay closed forever.

VCX has over 100,000 investors, most of whom are locked in for six months. The lock-up ends on September 19. At that point, a large volume of shares will flood the market, turning supply from extremely scarce into abundant overnight.

The reason VCX can command a 16x premium is partly because it contains Anthropic, and partly because there are so few shares available. Once the lock-up expires, the second condition disappears.

There’s also a bigger variable.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are all rumored to IPO between late 2026 and 2027. Anthropic just raised $30 billion last month, with a valuation of $380 billion, and has hired Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini to prepare for listing. SpaceX’s CFO has been communicating IPO plans with investors since late last year, aiming for mid-2024.

Once the main companies go public, shadows will lose their value.

If you can directly search for Anthropic’s stock code on your broker’s platform, why pay 16 times premium to buy a fund that holds it indirectly?

For example, DXYZ surged when it first listed in 2024, but after SpaceX delayed its IPO, the hype faded, and the stock price halved from its peak.

So, VCX investors are experiencing a classic countdown.

They paid 16 times the price for not the actual shares of Anthropic, but a ticket with an expiration date. When the door opens depends on when Anthropic decides to IPO.

Until then, the premium is maintained by scarcity; afterward, it will evaporate.

But shadow stocks aren’t accidental.

Every wave of technological innovation creates the same anxiety: you can’t buy the most important companies. In the 2000s, it was Google before going public, with Goldman Sachs employees desperately fighting for allocations. In 2020, it was SpaceX, where secondary market middlemen in Silicon Valley suddenly became the hottest contacts.

Now it’s AI.

And this time, the anxiety runs even deeper. Anthropic and OpenAI may not be profitable now, but they are rewriting the rules. Because of AI’s impact, SaaS stocks collapsed, safe stocks plummeted, and IBM lost $31 billion in a single day.

Investors see not just “these companies are profitable,” but “if I don’t get on their side, I might end up on the other side being crushed by them.”

VCX’s 16x premium isn’t just about a fund; it’s about this kind of anxiety itself.

The ticket will expire, the premium will fade. But as long as AI continues to accelerate and the most valuable companies stay behind closed doors, there will be people willing to pay irrational prices for shadows.

It’s not because shadows are worth that money, but because being locked outside feels too expensive.