The unusual offer for those who are “worth $100 million and live in a one bedroom apartment”

“If you’re going to fish, you’ve got to put a worm on the hook,” Duncan, the founder and managing partner of Ignatious, a boutique technology investment bank, told Business Insider. “What is my other option? Not to be a part of this?”.

● The employees reacted to the huge layoffs: “Welcome to 28 days of hell”
● Field after field, Anthropic’s launches shake up the technology market

The offer comes as the value of Anthropic, which is behind the “Cloud” artificial intelligence model, soared in the secondary markets to a trillion dollars, led by investors who were impressed by the overwhelming revenue growth and the momentum around the new tool “Cloud Code”.

Duncan, who lives primarily in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, also owns other properties, but decided to list this particular property because he thought it would be particularly attractive to Anthropic employees.

This is a mansion that covers 13 dunams, fully furnished and offers spectacular views of San Francisco, a pool and a spa.

Through the asset offering, Duncan hopes to get on the radar of employees who have unencumbered and sellable Anthropic shares, or people who have shares that cannot be sold until the company goes public.

Duncan says he has received many offers since the deal was announced this week. “Some are employees (of Anthropic), and some happened to invest early,” he said. “I believe they are serious, but this is a complex deal.”

“There are probably a significant number of people sitting in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco, even though they make $400,000 a year and are worth $100 million,” he said. “But their shares are so illiquid, so I give them an opportunity to diversify their investment.”

PR stunt?

This is not the first time that someone has tried to obtain shares in technology companies in an unconventional way even before the initial public offering. In 2005, artist David Cho chose Facebook stock worth over $60,000 in cash to paint murals in Facebook’s first office. This choice led to a windfall of about $200 million after Facebook went public in 2012. In the dot-com era, some property owners asked startups for shares in the company in exchange for renting space in San Francisco.

Some X users dismissed Duncan’s proposal, claiming it was a PR stunt or a sign of the peak of a bubble. Others have joked that the only thing more expensive than Anthropic stock is real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area.

But Duncan insists that the offer is genuine, and that he’s not looking for attention. As for why he doesn’t buy shares in the company directly, he says that a small investor like him would never be able to buy shares directly.

“Anthropic can’t hang out with people like me,” Duncan said. “They’re looking for people who can write $100 million in one check.” The company did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

Duncan already owns shares in Anthropic that he bought in its 2024 funding round, when shares were much easier to come by. He says that he recently became convinced that he wanted to double the investments, after he started implementing the AI ​​agent “Cloud Code” in his company. “It will probably triple our output and reduce our costs by 50%,” he said. “When I started implementing the platform in my company, I said I wanted to be more exposed to it.”