The old saying goes something like this: If you can’t get in the front door, go through the back, and if you can’t get in through the back door, find a window.
Now retail investors have found the window to get in on hot AI startup Anthropic. Fundrise, an online investment platform, owns 218,000 shares in Anthropic via its Tech Growth Fund, also called the Innovation Fund, according to a securities filing viewed by Fortune. Fundrise’s shares in Anthropic are valued at about $7 million, which implies about $32 a share.
Fundrise, in total, has 2.1 million users on its platform, about 385,000 total active investors. A little over 42,000 of those are invested in Fundrise’s Innovation Fund, which per the filing also owns shares in companies like Databricks, Anduril, Canva, and ServiceTitan.
This is interesting for a few reasons. The first, of course, is that for one of the most sought-after startups in the most sought-after sector—now everyday investors have a way to get a slice. (Albeit a small one–Anthropic’s valued at about $15 billion, and its big-name investors include Google, Menlo Ventures, Spark Capital, and Salesforce Ventures.) This is also a year characterized by high levels of interest in the secondary markets, as investors and employees scrounge for liquidity.
I used to cover the public markets, and frankly, I spent much of last year awed by how determined retail investors were to invest in AI, desperate even. That was coupled with an overwhelming sense that the most interesting companies were private and—by extension—unavailable to the average person.
When I went back to Fundrise to ask about their Anthropic investment, they declined to comment. (Anthropic also declined comment for this story.) But a little while back, I spoke to Fundrise CEO and cofounder Ben Miller about their Retail Investor AI Sentiment Report. How would you characterize investors’ excitement about AI? He had one word for me: “Extreme.” When was the last time Miller saw something this, well, extreme?
“Gosh, 1999? The Internet and how it changed the world, I would say. And the Internet lived up to its promise, maybe not as fast as we initially thought, but it did.”
And Fundrise’s data—gathered from 1,000 respondents—bears that out. In their survey, 66% of retail investors said that they wanted the chance to “invest in AI companies before they went public.” And, Miller notes, these are huge companies that in a different market might already have done an IPO.
“These companies are essentially equivalent to public companies, well over 90% of our portfolio would have been public a decade or two—this isn’t the same risk profile as an early stage venture fund,” Miller told me.
Indeed, as companies stay private longer, there’s a lot of gridlock, not only between startups and investors gunning for an exit but between large private companies and the public itself, the world of people who want in.
Miller foresees the lines between public companies and large private companies continue to blur—until, he says, there won’t be lines at all.
“Over time, the difference between the private markets and the public markets will dissolve,” Miller said.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Joe Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
VENTURE DEALS
- Eigenlayer, a Seattle, Wash.-based crypto startup developing an ethereum reestaking protocol, raised $100 million in Series B funding from a16z crypto.
- Frontier Medicines, a Boston, Mass and South San Francisco-based precision medicine company developing therapies against undruggable disease-causing targets, raised $80 million in Series C funding. Deerfield Management Company and Droia Ventures led the round and were joined by Galapagos, DCVC, and others..
- Zūm Rails, a Montreal, Québec-based open banking and instant payments platform, raised $10.5 million CAD ($7.8 million) in Series A funding from Arthur Ventures.
- Prowler, a Portland, Maine-based open-source cloud security platform, raised $6 million in seed funding from Decibel VC.
- Siftwell Analytics, a Charlotte, N.C.-based developer of AI-powered technology designed to identify patients at risk of certain conditions, raised $5.8 million in funding from AlleyCorp, Arkin Digital Health, Tau Ventures, and The Charlotte Fund.
- Connected, a Coimbra, Portugal-based startup building satellite payloads designed to provide better access to cellular connectivity, raised $2.2 million in funding. FundBox, Shilling VC, and Iberis Capital led the round and were joined by Amena Ventures, Octopus Ventures, and Keith Willey.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Charger Investment Partners acquired SBG Holdings, a Rockford, Tenn.-based manufacturer of equipment for concrete flooring conversion and maintenance, from Blue Point Capital Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Eyelit Technologies, a portfolio company of Banneker Partners, acquired Optessa, an Edmonton, Canada-based developer of planning and scheduling optimization software. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Vallen Distribution, a portfolio company of Nautic Partners, agreed to acquire Wesco Integrated Supply, a Uniondale, N.Y.-based provider of industrial maintenance, repair, and operations supply chain solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- Nautic Partners acquired SurfacePrep, a Grand Rapids, Mich-based supplier of surface enhancing products, from CenterOak Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHER
- Intapp (NASDAQ: INTA) agreed to acquire delphai, a Berlin, German-based developer of data automation, structuring, and intelligence AI software. Financial terms were not disclosed.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- Fathom Fund, a Houston, Texas-based venture capital fund, raised $100 million for its first fund focused on companies in advanced compute, material science, and other critical infrastructure industries.
PEOPLE
- Pruven Capital, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm, hired Jared Moberg as a principal. Formerly, he was with K1 Investment Management.
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