Anthropic Is Booming. How to Buy in Before the IPO.

Anthropic’s IPO has reportedly been pushed to November. There’s an ETF to play the company now. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

Key Points

• Harbor Capital Advisors launched the Anthropic AI Lab Ecosystem ETF in mid-August to target companies benefiting from Anthropic’s spending.
• The Anthropic ETF has gained about 5% since its debut and has accumulated $13.5 million in assets under management.
• The fund holds major chip companies, hyperscalers, and Bitcoin miners.

Anthropic will probably go public in a matter of weeks, but you’re antsy and ready to play the AI giant right now.

Here’s how: an exchange-traded fund that targets stocks that can benefit from the company’s prolific spending.

The Anthropic AI Lab Ecosystem ETF from Harbor Capital Advisors launched in mid-August. It’s an actively managed fund with big holdings in major chip companies like Broadcom, Advanced Micro Devices, and Micron as well as hyperscalers Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. In other words, the usual AI beneficiary suspects.

But the ETF also has significant weightings in Bitcoin miners such as TeraWulf, Hut 8 and Riot Platforms, which have all announced deals to lease data centers to Anthropic. The fund is up about 5% since it made its debut. It’s a backdoor way to cash in on the eventual Anthropic IPO, despite the fact that the offering is reportedly now being pushed to November.

Wall Street remains mostly enthusiastic about AI even though there has been more volatility as of late for tech stocks due to safety concerns and questions regarding the ultimate return on AI investments. Numerous fund companies have already filed to issue single-stock leveraged ETFs for Anthropic that would begin trading shortly after the IPO.

Justin Menne, portfolio manager at Harbor, said in an interview with Barron’s that interest in AI isn’t close to peaking, despite some of the near-term worries.

“This is a durable and sustainable theme,” Menne said, adding that “adoption is still very much on an upward projection.”

But given some of the questions about who will ultimately win the AI arms race, Menne said investing in multiple AI ecosystems is a safer strategy. Along those lines, the Anthropic ETF is one of five similar funds that all made its debut in mid-August from Harbor. The company also has ETFs tied to the AI spending of Meta Platforms, Alphabet, newly public SpaceX and ChatGPT owner OpenAI, which is also expected to go public either later this year or in 2027.

There is some overlap in the holdings of the Meta AI Lab Ecosystem, Google DeepMind AI Lab Ecosystem, SpaceXAI Lab Ecosystem and OpenAI Lab Ecosystem ETFs. Nvidia, Oracle and Taiwan’s Quanta Computer are positions in several of the funds. But there is enough differentiation between the ETFs so they don’t look exactly the same.

Menne said investors seem to be most interested in the Anthropic fund so far. It’s still relatively small, with just $13.5 million in assets under management since it launched last month. But that is more than the other four AI ecosystem funds combined, with $10.4 million in total assets for the Meta, Google, SpaceX and OpenAI funds.

Harbor is also looking to capitalize on AI with another fund that just launched in late August. The Munificent Seven ETF, a play on the Magnificent Seven of tech fame, owns leading energy stocks that can help fuel the insatiable demand for electricity required by AI. The fund owns Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, ConocoPhillips, BP and Norway’s Equinor.

The Munificent Seven fund hasn’t lived up to its name just yet, falling about 2% since it began trading. That’s largely due to the decline in oil prices in recent days on hopes that Iran will soon reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

But the rocky start for the Munificent Seven ETF is a clear sign of why investors should be wary of these and other AI-related funds. Thematic investing is inherently speculative given how concentrated the ETFs tend to be. The lack of diversification means little margin for error if investors suddenly sour on AI.

Most index funds are already overly exposed to tech. Owning even more ETFs that are inextricably tied to Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI leaders just piles on more risk.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8