Ordinary investors typically have to wait for a company to go public before they can buy shares. But a handful of exchange-traded funds are already holding pre-IPO stakes in some of the most talked-about private companies in tech—including Anthropic and OpenAI, the two AI labs at the center of the current artificial intelligence boom.
According to Barron's, ETFs from iShares, T. Rowe Price, ARK, Alger, and KraneShares have acquired pre-IPO positions in OpenAI or Anthropic. A few of those funds also hold stakes in SpaceX, Elon Musk's private rocket and satellite company.
This matters because Anthropic and OpenAI have remained stubbornly private even as their valuations have soared into the hundreds of billions of dollars. For most retail investors, that has meant watching the AI revolution from the sidelines. These ETFs offer a back-door route—though investors should note that pre-IPO holdings are typically a small slice of a diversified fund, and private company valuations can be harder to verify than those of publicly traded stocks.
The move reflects a broader trend of asset managers racing to give retail investors access to high-profile private companies before any potential IPO listing arrives. If and when Anthropic or OpenAI does go public, shareholders in these ETFs will already have exposure—making this a story about how the line between public and private markets is quietly blurring.