Anthropic Restricts Share Transfers on Eight Secondary Platforms

Anthropic updated its website this week to warn investors that certain private and secondary investment platforms are not authorized to provide access to its shares. The company named Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive, Forge Global, Sydecar and Upmarket as companies not authorized to provide access to buy or sell its shares.

“Any sale or transfer of Anthropic stock, or any interest in Anthropic stock, offered by these firms is void and will not be recognized on our books and records,” the company’s blog post reads.

Anthropic’s preferred and common stock are subject to transfer restrictions. Any share sale or transfer of Anthropic stock not approved by its board of directors will be considered invalid. Anthropic stated that it does not permit special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to acquire Anthropic stock and any transfer of shares to an SPV is void under its transfer restrictions.

Offers to invest in Anthropic’s past or future financing rounds through an SPV are prohibited. Equity in SPVs holding Anthropic shares could originate from an official investor or from holdings acquired during the bankruptcy of FTX. Forge Global claimed it had been included in Anthropic's warning erroneously.

“We are working with Anthropic to remove Forge’s name from this alert,” the platform told TechCrunch. Forge Global stated that it does not facilitate transactions in any private company’s shares without the explicit approval of the company. The update comes as demand for Anthropic shares has intensified.

Some secondary market brokers told TechCrunch last month that Anthropic is one of the hardest stocks to source. Anthropic is rumored to be raising fresh funding at a $900 billion valuation. Over the past year, crypto exchange OKX spun up investment products selling exposure to AI companies in the form of pre-IPO perpetual futures contracts.

These derivative instruments track the value of private companies on secondary markets but do not offer ownership of actual shares. SPVs are different, offering investors a chance to buy shares of an entity that holds at least some stake in Anthropic.

@techcrunch reported that the rise in platforms offering exposure to AI companies’ shares has occurred through secondary markets where existing shareholders sell their shares, tokenized securities, special purpose vehicles or secondary market holdings.

In other cases, the equity claim may be entirely fraudulent. Anthropic says any third-party platform that claims to sell its shares directly or using forward contracts is unauthorized to do so.