I'm stalking this brand-new way to buy Anthropic and OpenAI. You should too.

VCX is a rare one worth telling you about. It’s a new easy way to access the two most important private companies driving the AI boom: Anthropic, the creator of Claude, and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

These two companies have created tremendous wealth for those lucky few investors who’ve been able to access them. Since ChatGPT came out in late 2022, OpenAI’s valuation has ballooned 29X.

Meanwhile, Anthropic just announced a new funding round that values it at $900 billion. That means investors are up 220X since late 2022.

That’s great… for them. But since these companies do not trade on the stock market, the average person has made precisely $0 from them.

There are “backdoor” ways to buy Anthropic and OpenAI.

Today we’ll show you a new way.

If you can exercise patience and take 5 minutes to understand the nuance, I’d argue it’s your best bet.

The Fundrise Innovation Fund (VCX) only started trading publicly in March.

Fundrise calls it “the public ticker for private tech.”

That description is pretty accurate. The fund owns positions in private tech companies.

Two of its three biggest holdings are OpenAI and Anthropic. They represent 11% and 30.5% of the fund. So together, they are almost half of the fund.

The rest of VCX is spread across various private companies. Databricks, its 2nd largest position, is also a highly successful though lesser-known “Business to business” AI company.

So, close to 2/3 of the fund is invested in big private AI companies. The remaining 1/3 is invested in names like defense disruptor Anduril and fintech Ramp.

The single most important thing to understand about VCX is…

It’s a closed-end fund.

Closed-end funds are different from ETFs.

With an ETF, the price you pay is more or less identical to the value of the assets inside the fund.

When you buy the S&P 500 SPY ETF, for example, the price per share is equal to the value per share of the underlying 500 stocks it owns. You’re simply buying tiny slices of 500 stocks at their market value.

Closed-end funds do not work like this. The price is of a closed end fund is independent of the value of the assets it owns.

So you can end up paying $50 for $100 in assets. This is called a discount. Paying a discount is good – it means you’re getting more value for your money.

Or you can end up paying $200 for $100 in assets, called a premium.

Paying a premium is bad.

VCX’s premium changes every day, and varies from “not bad!” to “very bad.”

The bad news first: you’re probably not getting VCX for a discount.

It’s one of the only ways retail investors can access red-hot private companies. Eager investors have bid up VCX’s price to a premium. It’s likely to stay priced a premium on any reasonable timeline.

If VCX trades for a discount it probably means something has gone horribly wrong with AI.

So, is VCX worth buying?

It all boils down to the premium. With patience and intelligence, you can control the premium you pay.

At first glance, and based on Fundrise’s own website, VCX looks way too expensive.

But when we calculate it correctly, it starts to look interesting.

Fundrise last updated the value of VCX’s holdings on December 31. At the time, its NAV (Net Asset Value) stood at $437.4 million. This is the value or “what you get” when buying VCX.

Based on today’s VCX price of $158.98/share, the price is $4.51 billion. This is what you pay.

So, in theory, you’d be paying $10 to get $1. A 10X premium. Way too much no matter how bullish you are on AI.

But that’s a flawed way to look at it.

Most of the companies inside VCX are worth much more today than they were back in December, when the NAV was last publicly calculated.

For example, Anthropic’s last valuation in 2025 was $183 billion. In about a week from today, it will be valued at +$900 billion.

On secondary markets, Anthropic has been bid as high as $1.4 trillion!

OpenAI’s October 2025 valuation was $500 billion. That’s the price Fundrise likely used in calculating its December 31 NAV.

But OpenAI is worth $850 billion today. And on secondary markets, OpenAI’s valuation has reached over a trillion dollars.

How much a private company is “worth” is always up for debate. We know NVDA is worth $208 share because millions of buyers and sellers in the stock market tell us so.

With private companies, value is more of an art. Usually the best approximation we have is the valuation the last time the company raised money.

VCX’s real premium is far lower than the 10X its outdated NAV suggests.

How much lower?

We recalculated VCX’s real premium.

The more conservative way is to use valuations from each company’s latest funding round.

That would put the value of VCX’s holdings at about $810 million, as you can see here:

The less conservative but still valid way is to use the “high water mark” that each company has traded for on secondary markets. (secondary markets means private sales that occur outside the stock market)

That would put the value at about $1.2 billion.

As I write, VCX is about $158.98 per share. That translates to a total value of $4.51 billion.

So if you bought today, you’d still paying a 3.75X+ premium. Not great.

But keep in mind, the price of VCX moves every day. In fact when I started writing this article it was around $80. Then it soared 99% in one week. Before that, the premium was near 2X.

If you’re thinking of buying VCX, be patient and strategic.

The price is volatile.

If you can buy shares below a 2.5x premium, that’s reasonable. That would be about $106/share.

I recommend trying to acquire shares of VCX at a premium closer to 2x or below. That would be about $85/share.

Keep in mind, sentiment around AI swings wildly. One week its going to take all the jobs. The next week its going to bring us limitless abundance. The next week it’s all about public opposition to data centers.

My recommendation is to stalk VCX and pounce when sentiment is bad. That’s when you’ll get the best price.

Also, remember the values of the underlying investments are always changing too.

One last note: fees.

Fundrise charges a management fee of 1.85% If this were a simple ETF like SPY or GLD, that would be criminally high. But VCX actively sources investments and manages the fund. So, I’m okay with the fee in this case. Really, they’re charging for access. And access to these companies is truly scarce.

Good luck out there.