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By Christine Idzelis

ETFs and other funds currently available to ordinary investors offer exposure to Anthropic

Anthropic's IPO filing this week has revived enthusiasm for the AI-trade, at least for now.

Anthropic's upcoming public-market debut has stirred up investor interest in finding ways to get exposure to the artificial-intelligence company, both before its initial public offering and after the highly anticipated IPO.

The Tema Photonics & Optical ETF LAZR recently increased its allocation to the AI-model company to 10.5%, amounting to a relatively large holding of the private company among ETFs, according to a Tema ETFs announcement this week.

"We were around 6%" last week, and secured the increased exposure to Anthropic at the same valuation of about $1.4 trillion as when the ETF initially added it to its portfolio, Paisley Nardini, head of investment strategy at Tema ETFs, told MarketWatch by phone.

"We're getting closer to the IPO," she said. "We just have even higher conviction in the strong fundamentals" that came out in Anthropic's IPO filing this week.

Anthropic, which developed the AI assistant Claude, filed a preliminary prospectus for its planned IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, upping the excitement around the public offering of its shares that investors expect could come as soon as November. Investors seeking exposure to Anthropic have several strategies to consider, including proposed leveraged ETFs once it's public and funds with an allocation to the currently private company.

Anthropic's IPO filing "got people excited again," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, in a phone interview. "It definitely, at least in the short term, created a buzz around AI that had been missing for the past few weeks."

Private-market exposure

The Tema Photonics & Optical ETF, which launched in late June and mainly invests in public companies involved in photonic and optical products that help move data faster for AI, saw its weight in privately held Anthropic at almost 10% after Tuesday's trading session.

Among other exchange-traded funds providing exposure to Anthropic ahead of its IPO are the Corgi MANGOS ETF MN, with a nearly 9% weight in the company as recently as Tuesday. The ETF's name reflects its holdings of Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META), Anthropic, Nvidia (NVDA), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) (GOOG), OpenAI and SpaceX (SPCX).

Meanwhile, the KraneShares Public-Private AI & Technology ETF AGIX had a much smaller 2.3% of its net assets in Anthropic on Tuesday, while a popular thematic fund, the iShares A.I. Innovation and Tech Active ETF BAI, had just a 1.3% weight in Anthropic on that same day.

Beyond ETFs, the Destiny Tech100 DXYZ - a closed-end fund that invests in venture-capital-backed technology companies - counted Anthropic among its largest holdings at the end of June at around 14%, data on Destiny's website showed. Other closed-end funds that recently included pre-IPO exposure to Anthropic are the BlackRock Science & Technology Term Trust BSTZ and the BlackRock Science and Technology Trust BST, with weights of almost 6% and more than 7%, respectively, at the end of September.

"To illustrate how fast Anthropic is growing, in just five years of existence, its quarterly revenues are now higher than Intel (INTC), Uber (UBER), Coca-Cola (KO), Netflix (NFLX) and Nike (NKE)," said Tom Essaye, founder and president of Sevens Report Research, in a note on Wednesday.

Essaye cited other "everyday-investor-accessible funds" that provide exposure to Anthropic, including public venture fund Fundrise Innovation Fund VCX and the ARK Venture Fund, an actively managed closed-end interval fund with tickers ARKVX, ARKUX and ARKSX for different share classes. The Fundrise Innovation Fund had more than 20% of its net assets in Anthropic at the end of June, putting it at the top of Essaye's list of funds with the largest exposure to Anthropic.

For investors who are comfortable with owning exposure to Anthropic in a more indirect way, shares of Amazon.com (AMZN) and Alphabet could make for useful proxies. Both of these companies have invested billions in Anthropic, and their stakes have driven meaningful upside to their reported net income figures in recent quarters.

Alternatively, investors based outside of the U.S. can trade "pre-IPO" perpetual futures, which are derivative contracts, on platforms like Binance and Hyperliquid.

Leveraged ETFs

Meanwhile, several leveraged ETFs have been filed with the SEC that aim to amplify the daily performance of Anthropic's shares after the IPO.

GraniteShares, Direxion and Defiance plan to launch such ETFs that make bullish or bearish bets on Anthropic once it's public, filings show. Preliminary prospectuses were also filed for the Leverage Shares 2x Long Anthropic Daily ETF, Leverage Shares 2x Short Anthropic Daily ETF and Leverage Shares 1x Short Anthropic Daily ETF.

Tradr plans to launch leveraged and inverse ETFs tied to Anthropic's daily performance shortly after it goes public, with filings made for the Trader 2X Long Anthropic Daily ETF and Tradr 2X Short Anthropic Daily ETF. And REX Shares has filed for a leveraged ETF linked to Anthropic, which, like other such funds, would use derivatives to amplify the daily price moves in the company's shares.

The raft of filings are reminiscent of SpaceX's hotly anticipated initial public offering in June. That IPO also attracted heavy investor interest, and the ETF industry quickly capitalized on that with several leveraged funds linked to the company's newly listed shares.

To be sure, leveraged ETFs are risky - amplifying gains but also potential losses on wrong-way bets.

Check out: Risky leveraged ETFs are booming in 2026. Some worry they could be making the stock market more volatile.

Thematic ETFs

The AI trade has been a dominant theme in the ETF industry, opening ways for investors to play Anthropic via public companies that potentially stand to benefit from growth in its ecosystem.

For example, Harbor Capital Advisors launched in August the Anthropic AI Lab Ecosystem ETF ANTW along with other AI-lab funds centered around frontier-model developers such as OpenAI.

Anthropic is perceived as "if not the premier AI model," than certainly one of them, said Sosnick.

The top five holdings of the Anthropic AI Lab Ecosystem ETF were TeraWulf (WULF), Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft (MSFT) and Broadcom (AVGO) as of Tuesday. Both Microsoft and Alphabet will report quarterly earnings after the closing bell Wednesday, which will be closely watched by investors monitoring AI developments.

Anthropic - which, Essaye noted, is backed by huge investments from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and Salesforce - aims to list next month at a potential valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.

"That would make it one of the world's most valuable public companies on its debut," Essaye observed.

-Christine Idzelis

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