Anthropic and OpenAI have declared unauthorized secondary sales of their private shares void, targeting Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) structures used by retail and smaller institutional investors to gain pre-IPO exposure. Anthropic specifically named Forge Global as a platform facilitating trades it considers illegitimate.
The companies stated they will not recognize buyers in these transactions as shareholders. The crackdown reflects a broader tightening in private equity as demand for exposure to high-profile AI companies surges. For crypto platforms offering tokenized or synthetic exposure to these shares, the announcements create a binary legal risk: if the underlying shares are deemed void, the tokens representing them are worthless.
Investors must now ask their platform providers whether the issuing company approved the underlying share transfer. If not, the investment thesis collapses.