A Bay Area banker won’t take cash for his $4.85 million estate — only Anthropic stock. Is this a sign of where AI money is heading next?

That's why investment banker Storm Duncan is proposing this unusual trade: his 13-acre Bay Area estate in exchange for equity in Anthropic.

"I'm under-concentrated in AI investments relative to the importance of AI in the future and over-concentrated in real estate," he told The San Francisco Standard. He's hoping that an Anthropic shareholder is in the opposite situation and wants to diversify their assets (2).

Duncan believes that by structuring the deal as a private transaction, the shareholder could acquire his home while retaining some upside in their shares during an IPO lockup period, should Anthropic go public (Bloomberg reports that Anthropic is considering going public as early as October (3)).

A lockup period is the timeframe after an initial public offering (IPO) when shareholders are prohibited from selling their shares. This time period is typically 90 to 180 days.

While Duncan hasn't yet sold his house, his proposal is an example of growing interest in the acquisition of AI stock.

But, while you can't invest directly in privately held Anthropic, there are a few other ways to gain exposure to the company, and they don't require trading in your house.

How to invest in pre-IPO shares

Investors poured $300 billion into 6,000 startups globally in the first quarter of this year, according to Crunchbase data. And, that investment "largely went to AI startups and disproportionately to a handful of U.S.-based companies in record-setting deals (4)."

While not all AI startups are privately held companies, the vast majority are.

And though you can't buy shares in a privately held company, accredited investors (who meet net worth or income requirements) can sometimes access pre-IPO shares through secondary marketplaces, such as Hiive, Forge Global, EquityZen and Nasdaq Private Market.

Buyers gain early access to private company stock before it's publicly listed, and sellers (investors or employees) could benefit if they're seeking liquidity. But secondary marketplaces operate under different rules than public exchanges, and that comes with added risk.

For example, private companies may be less transparent than public companies. Your money could be locked up for years while you wait for an IPO or acquisition. There's also the risk that the startup will fail, resulting in a total loss.

There are a few other ways to gain indirect exposure to AI stocks. For example, you could invest in a private fund with AI exposure. Similar to an ETF, you invest in a basket of companies, though you may need to be an accredited investor to access some of these offerings.

Another option is investing in one of the company's backers. For example, Alphabet (Google's parent company) and Amazon are two big investors in Anthropic, which also runs its models on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

You could also invest in the technology 'stack' — the components necessary to run AI, such as AI chips, GPUs, data center CPUs and networking components.

Or perhaps, like Duncan, you could come up with a unique way to get your hands on privately held stock, like swapping your house for it.

Should you swap real estate for stock?

While Duncan's approach is uncommon, could it be the way of the future?

Cryptocurrency has already made some inroads into real estate. Miami-based Milo, for example, allows homebuyers to use Bitcoin or Ethereum as collateral for their downpayment (instead of having to sell their crypto assets). This allows them to defer capital gains while maintaining exposure to their assets.