Anthropic has become one of the most closely watched private companies in the AI market. With a potential IPO reportedly moving from October to November, investors are paying closer attention not just to the company itself, but to the different ways they can get exposure to it before it becomes publicly traded.
One of those routes is already sitting on the public market.
Fundrise’s Innovation Fund, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker VCX, includes Anthropic among its largest disclosed holdings.
That has made VCX an interesting proxy for investors who want exposure to Anthropic through a brokerage account.
But there is an important catch.
Investors are not simply buying Anthropic. They are buying a fund that owns Anthropic alongside a much broader portfolio.
And recently, the amount investors have been willing to pay for that access has fallen sharply.
The premium has come down significantly
VCX closed at $30.60 on September 23, down from $38.12 on September 8.
At first glance, that looks like a straightforward decline in the market price.
But the more interesting number is the fund’s net asset value, or NAV.
Fundrise’s reported NAV as of June 30 was $21.70 per share.
That means investors were still paying substantially more than the reported value of the underlying assets.
On September 8, the difference represented a premium of roughly 76%.
By September 23, using the same June 30 NAV, the premium had fallen to around 41%.
That is a dramatic change in what investors are willing to pay above the fund’s reported underlying value.
But there is an important limitation.
The $21.70 NAV is a June 30 figure, while the $30.60 share price reflects September trading.
So the 41% figure should not be treated as a precise measure of VCX’s current premium.
The portfolio may have become more valuable or less valuable since June.
Still, the movement in the share price tells us something important about market sentiment.
Investors are paying less for access to the portfolio than they were earlier in September.
VCX is not an Anthropic stock
This is probably the most important point to understand.
It can be tempting to look at VCX and say:
Anthropic is a major holding, so the premium must be the price investors are paying for Anthropic.
That is too simple.
Anthropic represented more than 20% of VCX’s net assets in Fundrise’s June report.
OpenAI and Databricks each represented between 10% and 20%.
That gives the fund meaningful exposure to some of the most closely watched private AI companies.
But Anthropic still represents only part of the portfolio.
VCX also holds:
- Other technology companies
- Debt securities
- Short-term holdings
- Other private investments
- Indirect positions held through special-purpose vehicles
So when someone buys VCX, they are buying the entire package.
The premium belongs to the whole portfolio, not to Anthropic alone.
That distinction matters even more if Anthropic eventually becomes publicly traded.
Why the lockup change matters
There is another factor that makes VCX’s recent share-price movement harder to interpret.
Fundrise accelerated the expiration of the lockup for pre-listing shareholders.
The original expiration date was September 14, but it was moved forward to August 13, making those shares eligible to trade from August 14.
That potentially increased the number of shares available to sellers.
In simple terms, more shares became eligible to trade at a time when investor demand could determine where VCX traded relative to its NAV.
But we should be careful about drawing conclusions.
The change does not tell us:
- Who sold
- How much they sold
- Why they sold
- Whether the selling was related to Anthropic
- Whether buyers changed their valuation of the underlying portfolio
VCX had already fallen to $33.50 by September 11, before reports emerged on September 18 that Anthropic’s IPO timetable had shifted.
So the recent decline cannot simply be attributed to the reported IPO delay.
The market was already repricing VCX before that news surfaced.
The unusual math of a closed-end fund
This is where VCX gets particularly interesting.
With a normal stock, the market price represents what investors are willing to pay for that company’s shares.
A closed-end fund has another layer.
There is the NAV, which represents the estimated value of the assets held by the fund.
Then there is the market price, which is determined by buyers and sellers trading the fund’s shares.
Those two numbers can move independently.
That means a fund can own assets that are increasing in value while its own shares are falling.
Consider a simple example
Imagine a fund has:
- NAV of $100
- Share price of $140
- Premium of 40%
Now imagine the underlying assets rise and the NAV increases to $110.
That sounds positive.
But suppose investors simultaneously become less willing to pay a large premium, and the fund’s premium falls to 10%.
The share price would then be:
$110 × 1.10 = $121
The underlying assets increased by 10%.
But the investor who originally paid $140 would now be sitting on a loss of roughly 14%.
The portfolio performed well. The investment still lost money because the premium contracted.
That is the risk VCX investors need to understand.
The opposite can happen too
Premium compression is not always the story.
If investors become more enthusiastic about a fund, the premium can expand.
The underlying portfolio could remain unchanged while the share price rises because buyers are willing to pay more for access.
This creates a second source of return, or risk, beyond the performance of the underlying companies.
For investors looking at VCX, there are therefore two questions:
1. What are the underlying assets worth?
2. What premium or discount will the market place on those assets?
Both matter.
Why the June NAV does not tell the whole story
The 41% premium figure is useful, but it needs context.
The fund’s reported NAV of $21.70 is based on June 30.
The market price of $30.60 is from September 23.
There is almost three months of potential changes between those two dates.
Private-company valuations can move even without a new financing round.
Fundrise’s valuation policy allows it to consider several factors, including:
- Operating performance
- Company-provided information
- Private-market transactions
- Transfer restrictions
- Other relevant valuation considerations
So the absence of a new funding round does not automatically mean the private company’s valuation has remained unchanged.
A June valuation should not be treated as a real-time price for September.
The next quarterly report should provide a more useful comparison because investors will be able to look at the updated NAV alongside the market price around the same period.
Anthropic’s IPO could change the equation
This is where things get particularly interesting.
If Anthropic eventually goes public, investors will suddenly have another way to get exposure to the company.
Instead of buying VCX and receiving exposure to Anthropic plus dozens of other assets, an investor could potentially buy Anthropic shares directly.
That could reduce one of the reasons investors might be willing to pay a premium for VCX.
Why pay a large premium for indirect exposure to Anthropic if you can buy Anthropic itself?
But that does not automatically make VCX unattractive.
The fund would still offer:
- Diversification
- Exposure to other private companies
- Professional portfolio management
- Access to investments beyond Anthropic
Fundrise has also indicated that its strategy can involve holding companies even after they become publicly traded.
So an Anthropic IPO would not necessarily mean VCX immediately exits its position.
The IPO could change the value of access, but it would not eliminate the value of the broader portfolio.
The real question is not just “What is Anthropic worth?”
For investors watching VCX, it is easy to focus entirely on Anthropic’s potential valuation.
But the more useful question is broader:
What are investors willing to pay for access to this entire portfolio?
That distinction becomes increasingly important as private AI companies move toward public markets.
When access is scarce, investors may be willing to pay a significant premium for indirect exposure.
But when a company eventually lists publicly, that scarcity can disappear.
Investors suddenly have a direct route.
That can change the economics of owning a fund that provides indirect exposure.
It does not necessarily mean the fund becomes less valuable.
It means investors may reassess how much of a premium they are willing to pay for the convenience and diversification it provides.
VCX is a useful signal, but not a perfect Anthropic proxy
There is another reason to be cautious.
VCX’s market price tells us what buyers and sellers are willing to pay for VCX shares.
It does not give us a clean market price for private Anthropic shares.
The two securities are different.
They have different ownership structures, different liquidity, different transfer restrictions and different exposures.
That means applying VCX’s 41% premium directly to Anthropic would be misleading.
VCX can tell us something about investor appetite for access to private AI assets. It cannot tell us exactly what Anthropic’s private shares are worth.
That distinction is critical.
What investors should watch next
The next major data point will be the fund’s updated holdings report.
Investors will want to compare:
Updated NAV vs. VCX’s market price
That will provide a cleaner picture of whether the premium has actually contracted, rather than simply comparing a September share price with a June NAV.
The next report could also help answer several questions:
- Has Anthropic’s reported valuation changed?
- Has its percentage of the portfolio changed?
- What happened to the OpenAI and Databricks positions?
- Did the fund buy or sell other holdings?
- How much of the NAV movement came from valuation changes?
- How much came from purchases, sales, expenses or distributions?
Those details matter more than simply watching the VCX share price.
The bigger lesson for private-market investors
VCX highlights a broader issue that is becoming increasingly important as private companies stay private for longer.
Getting access to a hot private company is not the same thing as getting access at a fair price.
Investors can pay a premium because they want exposure.
But that premium itself can disappear.
And when it does, investors can lose money even if the underlying company continues to perform well.
That is especially relevant for high-profile AI companies, where investor enthusiasm can be exceptionally strong.
The temptation is to focus on the company everyone is talking about.
The better approach is to ask:
What exactly am I buying?
What is it actually worth?
How much am I paying above that value?
And what happens if the market no longer believes that premium is justified?
The bottom line
VCX’s decline from $38.12 to $30.60 between September 8 and September 23 is more than a simple stock-price move.
It highlights how quickly the market’s willingness to pay a premium for private-company exposure can change.
Anthropic is an important part of the story, but it is not the entire story.
VCX is a diversified portfolio, and its market price reflects both the value of that portfolio and the premium investors are willing to place on access to it.
If Anthropic eventually goes public, that premium could face another test.
Investors would have a direct way to buy the AI company, while VCX would continue to offer a broader basket of private-market exposure.
For now, the most useful number to watch is not simply Anthropic’s headline valuation.
It is the gap between what VCX owns and what investors are willing to pay for it.
That gap can close quickly.
And as VCX has shown, even a strong private-company portfolio does not guarantee that the premium investors paid for access will hold.