In February of this year, one of the most powerful AI companies in the world quietly released a software tool that most people had never heard of.
The financial press barely noticed at first.
Then, in the span of six trading days, it erased nearly $1 trillion from the stock market.
IBM fell $40 billion in a single session — its worst single day in 25 years. CrowdStrike shed $20 billion across two trading days. LegalZoom and LexisNexis were cut nearly in half. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF — which tracks some of the most widely held stocks in America — dropped 30%.
All of it happened because one company demonstrated that its new software could do the jobs of lawyers, cybersecurity engineers, and software developers in a matter of minutes.
That company is Anthropic.
And on June 1, 2026, it filed a confidential IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission — setting the stage for what may be the most consequential public offering since Google went public in 2004.
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The Numbers Are Staggering
Anthropic’s most recent funding round closed on May 28, 2026. It raised $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation — making it the most valuable private AI company on the planet, narrowly ahead of OpenAI.
Its revenue run rate has reached $47 billion — up from $10 billion in annual revenue just a year ago. That’s more than 4x growth in twelve months.
For context, Google roughly doubled revenues every year during its early hypergrowth phase. Nvidia doubled every year during the generative AI buildout. Anthropic is doing it faster.
Eight of the 10 largest companies in the world use its technology. Goldman Sachs, the U.S. military, NASA, and Amazon have all embedded it into core operations. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Nvidia are all investors on the cap table.
And analysts expect the IPO listing as early as October 2026 — which means the window to get ahead of the institutional buying wave is measured in weeks, not months.
I’m Urging You Not to Buy the IPO
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Here’s where I’m going to say something that might surprise you.
When Anthropic finally goes public, I won’t be recommending you buy shares on day one.
Not because I’m bearish on the company. I believe Anthropic may become one of the most important companies in American history.
But I’ve seen this movie before, and I know how it ends for retail investors who chase the opening print.
The academic literature on IPO underperformance is overwhelming. In the 12 months following their public debuts, newly listed companies underperform the broad market by an average of 21%, according to research from the University of Florida’s Jay Ritter, who has tracked IPO performance for over three decades. The most hyped IPOs — the ones with trillion-dollar valuations and Wall Street breathlessness — tend to be the worst performers.
Think about Uber. Rivian. Lyft. Arm Holdings. All debuted to enormous fanfare. All disappointed investors who bought at the open.
The people who get rich on IPOs are the ones who get in before the bell rings.
And right now, there’s a way to do exactly that.
The $41 Backdoor Into a Near-Trillion-Dollar Company
In August 2023, a South Korean telecom company made one of the most contrarian investments in modern financial history.
SK Telecom — the largest wireless carrier in South Korea, with 23 million subscribers — put $100 million into Anthropic when the company was valued at $5 billion.
At the time, most people had never heard of Anthropic. Claude was a niche research product. The investment looked eccentric, possibly reckless.
Today, Anthropic is worth $965 billion.
That original $100 million stake has multiplied roughly 20 times on paper — and the company’s carrying value of the Anthropic position has climbed to an estimated $2.5 billion, against SK Telecom’s total market cap of approximately $13 billion.
Do the math: Anthropic represents roughly 19% of SK Telecom’s entire market value — and it’s growing every day.
Here’s what makes this even more interesting.
Two days ago — on June 10, 2026 — SK Telecom’s CEO Jung Jae-heon stood up at NTT’s headquarters in Tokyo and told reporters something remarkable.
When asked whether SK Telecom planned to sell its Anthropic stake ahead of the IPO — which would have been the obvious, safe, short-term profit play — he said no.
Not only that. He revealed that SK Telecom had just made a follow-on investment in Anthropic’s $65 billion Series H round, deepening its position rather than cashing out.
“We face no financial pressure to sell,” Jung said. “We see continued room to cooperate, so we have no plans to offload the stake immediately.”
I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I know what that kind of signal means. When a company is sitting on a 20x paper gain and still buying more, they see something the market hasn’t priced in yet.
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Why This Trade Works
The bear case on SK Telecom has always been that it’s a mature telecom business in a competitive market — the kind of slow-growth, dividend-paying company that institutional investors use as a parking spot, not a high-conviction bet.
That’s still true. The underlying telecom business isn’t going to triple your money.
But that’s not why I’m recommending it.
SK Telecom is trading at roughly $41 per share as of this week.
Its Anthropic stake alone — at current private valuations — is worth approximately $2.5 billion, or about $8.50 per share of SKM stock. That’s before the IPO, before any public market repricing, and before SK Telecom’s newest follow-on investment is reflected in the books.
If Anthropic lists at a $1.2 trillion market cap — a reasonable expectation given current momentum — SK Telecom’s stake at that price approaches $3.7 billion, roughly $12.50 per share of a $41 stock.
You’re essentially getting the Anthropic exposure nearly free, wrapped inside a cash-generating telecom business that pays a dividend while you wait.
Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are all on Anthropic’s cap table as strategic partners. These aren’t passive financial investors — these are the companies that build the chips and cloud infrastructure Claude runs on. They’re buying equity to lock in a long-term commercial relationship. SK Telecom is doing the same, embedding Anthropic’s AI into its data center and enterprise services businesses.
CEO Jung was explicit: this is a strategic partnership that both sides want to deepen. They aren’t selling.
What I’d Do Right Now
I want to be clear about the risk here. SK Telecom is a foreign-listed company, and the ADR carries currency exposure to the South Korean won. The telecom underlying business has competitive pressures in its home market. And if Anthropic’s IPO disappoints — or gets delayed beyond 2026 — the near-term catalyst evaporates.
This is not a position to bet your retirement on. It’s a position to size appropriately and hold with conviction.
But here’s my honest read on the situation.
Anthropic just filed with the SEC. SK Telecom just bought more shares rather than selling. The IPO is expected by October. The company’s revenue grew 4x in twelve months, and its software has already demonstrated it can disrupt IBM, the entire cybersecurity industry, and the global legal software market — in six days.
When the opening bell finally rings on the Anthropic IPO, the institutional money will rush in, the headlines will be deafening, and the stock will likely open at a price no retail investor can reasonably justify.
But right now, today, you can buy into a company that owns a $2.5 billion piece of Anthropic — and is actively buying more — for $41 a share.
The ticker is SKM.
I won’t promise you when the market catches on. But I’m confident it will.
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