A new wrinkle has appeared in the housing market: some home sellers are no longer content with cash. According to Investopedia, certain sellers are asking to be paid in shares of hot, privately held artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
These are pre-IPO companies, meaning their stock is not yet traded on a public exchange like the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq. As reporting on MSN notes, the demand is specifically for stock in these in-demand, not-yet-public firms.
The obvious question, as Investopedia frames it in its headline, is simple: how does that even work? Selling a house is already a complex transaction involving lawyers, escrow, and large sums of money. Swapping a property for shares that cannot be easily bought or sold on an open market adds a layer of complication most buyers and sellers have never faced.
The sources presented here flag the trend and the puzzle it raises rather than laying out a step-by-step mechanism, so the practical details of how such a deal is structured remain the open question the coverage is built around.
Why it matters: it signals how much excitement is swirling around leading AI firms — enough that some people now treat a stake in them as more desirable than the cash from one of the biggest assets they will ever own.