Want to invest in Anthropic, the company behind Claude? You can’t buy shares directly — it’s private, valued at $380 billion after a jaw-dropping $30 billion funding round last week. But there’s a backdoor, and it’s one of the weirdest trades on Wall Street right now.
SK Telecom (SKM), a South Korean telecom company, holds a stake in Anthropic that has essentially transformed it into an AI stock. Its ADR is up 57% year-to-date — not because its phone business is booming (fourth-quarter revenue fell 4.1% and operating income dropped 53%), but because the Anthropic investment has more than offset the decline in its core operations. Morningstar recently raised its fair value estimate by 40%, citing the Anthropic stake as the primary driver.
The Anthropic numbers are staggering. The company’s annualized revenue has climbed to $14 billion, up from roughly $10 billion last year. Its coding tool, Claude Code, alone generates $2.5 billion in annualized revenue and has seen business subscriptions quadruple since the start of the year. The $30 billion Series G — led by Coatue and Singapore’s GIC, with participation from D.E. Shaw Ventures, Founders Fund, and others — includes portions of previously announced commitments from Microsoft (up to $5 billion) and Nvidia (up to $10 billion).
For context, this was the second-largest private funding round in tech history, behind only OpenAI’s $40 billion raise from SoftBank. Anthropic now sits at a $380 billion post-money valuation, more than double its September number. Claude Code’s popularity has been so disruptive that it’s contributed to a $2 trillion wipeout in software stocks as investors fear AI will eat traditional enterprise software.
Here’s what makes the SKM trade interesting: you’re getting exposure to one of the two most important AI companies on the planet — at a fraction of what direct investors are paying per share of Anthropic equity. The risk? SK Telecom’s core telecom business is declining, it hasn’t paid a dividend in two consecutive quarters, and the Anthropic stake’s value is entirely dependent on private market valuations holding up.
It’s unconventional. It’s indirect. And it’s already up 57% this year. For AI investors tired of paying 40x earnings for Nvidia, SKM might be the strangest — and most interesting — alternative on the board.