Ninepoint's High-Stakes AI Gambit: A Leveraged Play on Private Titan Anthropic

TORONTO, ON – June 26, 2026

In the relentless gold rush for artificial intelligence exposure, Toronto-based Ninepoint Partners has just staked a bold and potentially treacherous claim. The alternative investment manager today filed a preliminary prospectus for the Ninepoint Anthropic HighShares ETF (TSX: ANHI), a fund that is anything but typical. It proposes to offer Canadian investors a concentrated, leveraged, and income-generating vehicle tied to the fortunes of a single, privately held company: the AI behemoth Anthropic.

This isn't just another thematic fund rounding up publicly traded tech stocks. ANHI is a complex financial instrument designed to provide direct access to one of the most valuable and sought-after private companies in the world. By combining a massive, singular bet with leverage and an options strategy, Ninepoint is testing the boundaries of ETF innovation and investor appetite for risk. The underlying signal is clear: the demand to invest in frontier AI is so intense that the market is now creating novel, high-octane structures to satisfy it, blurring the lines between public market accessibility and private equity exclusivity.

Decoding the High-Wire Act

At its core, the proposed ANHI fund is a three-part financial cocktail with a risk rating explicitly labeled 'High'. First, it is a tool of extreme concentration. The ETF intends to hold up to 100% of its assets in the Class A common stock of Anthropic PBC. This eschews all notions of diversification, making the fund’s performance entirely dependent on the success of one company in the hyper-competitive AI landscape.

Second, the fund will employ leverage, borrowing cash up to 33% of its unlevered net asset value. This is designed to amplify capital appreciation. If Anthropic’s valuation continues its meteoric ascent, investors could see magnified returns. However, leverage is a double-edged sword; any downturn in the private company’s stock value will result in equally magnified losses, a risk that cannot be overstated for a single-stock position.

Third, to deliver on its promise of “high monthly cash distributions,” ANHI will implement a covered call strategy. The fund manager will write call options on up to 50% of its Anthropic shares. The premiums collected from selling these options will generate a cash flow stream, but it comes at a cost. This strategy effectively caps the upside potential on half of the fund's holdings. If Anthropic's stock price soars past the option's strike price, the ETF will be forced to sell its shares, forfeiting a portion of the explosive gains that likely drew investors in the first place.

“This isn’t your typical thematic ETF. It’s a highly concentrated, levered instrument designed for investors who understand and can stomach extreme volatility for the chance at outsized returns,” noted one market analyst familiar with complex fund structures. The combination of leverage to boost gains and covered calls to generate income creates a push-and-pull dynamic that makes ANHI a sophisticated play, far removed from a simple buy-and-hold strategy.

The Crown Jewel: Why Anthropic?

The entire premise of this high-stakes ETF rests on the perceived value and future trajectory of Anthropic. Founded in 2021 by former senior members of OpenAI, the San Francisco-based public benefit corporation has positioned itself as a conscientious leader in the AI race. Its flagship family of models, known as Claude, is built on a framework of “Constitutional AI,” a safety-focused approach designed to align the technology with human values, making it 'helpful, harmless, and honest.'

This safety-first branding has proven to be a powerful commercial differentiator, helping Anthropic secure major enterprise clients in regulated industries and an estimated 32% market share in the enterprise LLM space. The company's growth has been nothing short of spectacular. Its annualized revenue run-rate reportedly crossed $47 billion in May 2026, and a Series H funding round that same month rocketed its valuation to an astonishing $965 billion, making it the world's most valuable pure-play AI company.

This valuation has been fueled by billions in investment from tech giants like Amazon and Google, alongside a who's who of venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, Coatue, and GIC. For investors, Anthropic represents a primary competitor to OpenAI with a compelling narrative and immense institutional backing. The recent confidential filing of a draft S-1 registration with the SEC suggests a future IPO is on the horizon, making a vehicle like ANHI a potential gateway for pre-IPO exposure.

However, the path is not without peril. Just this month, North American regulators ordered Anthropic to suspend services for two of its new flagship models, citing cross-border data security risks. This move serves as a stark reminder of the volatile regulatory and operational environment facing even the most prominent AI players.

Carving a Niche in the AI Gold Rush

In a market saturated with AI-themed ETFs that offer diversified baskets of public companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Alphabet, ANHI is a radical departure. It carves out a unique niche by offering what many sophisticated investors crave but cannot access: a concentrated position in a pre-IPO unicorn. “It's a structure designed to give accredited and retail investors alike a taste of a private market giant, an opportunity usually reserved for venture capitalists and large institutions,” one fund manager commented.

This innovative, high-risk approach is characteristic of Ninepoint Partners. The firm, which oversees approximately $8.2 billion in assets, has built its brand on alternative strategies, having previously launched pioneering funds like the Ninepoint Bitcoin ETF and the Ninepoint Carbon Credit ETF. The ANHI filing is another step in its strategy of packaging complex, emerging asset classes into accessible exchange-traded products. The proposed management fee of 0.29% is notably aggressive for such a specialized and actively managed strategy, signaling an intent to capture significant assets by undercutting typical alternative fund fee structures.

The Regulatory Gauntlet and Investor Caution

The novel structure of the Ninepoint Anthropic HighShares ETF guarantees it will face intense scrutiny from the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA). Regulators will undoubtedly focus on several key areas of risk. The valuation of a private, illiquid asset like Anthropic stock, which lacks the daily price discovery of public markets, will be a primary concern. The fund’s ability to manage liquidity to meet potential redemptions, especially in a market downturn, will also be under the microscope.

Furthermore, the combination of leverage and derivatives in a retail-facing product raises significant investor protection issues. Regulators will demand exceptionally clear and prominent disclosure of the multifaceted risks, and the 'High' risk rating will place a heavy burden of suitability on the financial advisors who might recommend it. This is not a product for the faint of heart or the inexperienced investor.

Whether ANHI receives a receipt for its final prospectus remains to be seen. The process will serve as a critical test case for how Canadian regulators view the democratization of access to private market assets through complex ETF structures. For now, the filing itself serves as a bold declaration of intent, signaling that the public's insatiable appetite for AI exposure is pushing financial engineering into uncharted territory.