Back in May, Anthropic voided every trade run through 8 platforms that claimed to sell its stock. Around the same time, one guy was pouring tens of millions into Anthropic shares — no VC fund, no deal team, no office.
Turns out not all SPVs are the same
Money is flooding into pre-IPO stakes in AI startups that haven't gone public yet — Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, you name it. One secondary marketplace, Unicorns Exchange, says it fielded roughly $1 trillion in buy inquiries over 90 days.
When demand looks like that, of course a bunch of platforms pop up selling "access." And in May, Anthropic drew a hard line. Any stock sale or transfer that wasn't approved by the board doesn't count on the company's books — full stop. Anthropic named names: Open Doors Partners, Unicorns Exchange, Pachamama Capital, Lionheart Ventures, Hiive, Forge Global, Sydecar, and Upmarket.
"Voided" sounds abstract until you spell out what it means: you paid money, but your name never made it onto the cap table. So when that company eventually IPOs, there's nothing to convert — because there was never anything registered in the first place. Anthropic's own fraud pattern list matches this almost exactly: claims of "undisclosed access," payment requests in crypto or other hard-to-trace methods, and — the tell — never being able to produce proof of board approval.
So how did this guy move $500M, exactly?
Justin Ernest spent more than five years at deep-tech investor Playground Global before starting Sabertooth Capital. Here's the thing — registering an actual VC fund and raising LPs for it usually takes 12 to 18 months. Ernest didn't wait around for that.
Instead, he set up a separate SPV for every single deal, held the shares through a nominee structure, and pitched each deal individually to a network of about 30 small institutional investors — mostly family offices. Over the past 12 months that's added up to roughly $500M across 10 companies — Anthropic, Databricks, PsiQuantum, SpaceX, Base Power, and more — in checks ranging from $10M to $275M.
Here's the part that actually matters: Ernest only ever takes shares through rounds the company itself has officially approved. This isn't the secondary-market move of quietly rounding up shares from existing shareholders — it's participating in a real, sanctioned investment round that the issuer signed off on. Benjamin Wagner, a family office CIO, put it this way: "Justin is a real investor. He's not like other groups just trying to aggregate capital." PsiQuantum's CFO has personally recommended Sabertooth to Wagner — that's how much trust Ernest has built with the companies themselves. And he's already had one big win: portfolio company Groq got acquired by Nvidia for $20 billion.
So what's actually different here?
The wrapper is identical either way — it's an SPV. The only thing that splits them is one question: did the issuer know about and approve the deal?
| Unauthorized secondary platform | Ernest-style SPV | |
|---|---|---|
| How shares are acquired | Quietly aggregated from existing shareholders | Through an official, company-sanctioned round |
| Issuer approval | None | Secured in advance |
| Cap table entry | Never happens | Registered properly via nominee |
| Conversion at IPO | Nothing to convert | Converts normally |
| Company / CFO reaction | Gets flagged as a warning | Gets personally introduced to more deals |
This distinction matters more right now because so much capital is looking to skip VCs entirely and go straight to deals. Jeff Bezos' family office, Bezos Expeditions, made direct investments in five AI startups in a single month this June. There's no shortage of money — what's actually scarce is people with real access. That's the bottleneck in this market right now.
Worth knowing how SPVs actually make money too: the standard structure is 0% management fee plus 5-10% carry — much thinner than a traditional fund's 1% management fee plus 20% carry. That structure alone doesn't scale into a real firm, which is why Ernest is upfront that "the end goal is to build a traditional fund." He's using this SPV track record to eventually raise one.
How this plays out outside the US
The SPV structure itself isn't unusual elsewhere either — deal-by-deal vehicles set up as LPs or LLCs are already common practice in plenty of markets. If you're pitched a stake in a pre-IPO US company through an SPV, the same rule from this Anthropic story applies: start by asking whether the issuer actually approved the deal.
Getting pitched an SPV deal? Check these 5 things first
- Ask for proof of issuer approval, up front
Just ask: "can you show me evidence the board approved this transaction?" If they can't produce it, that's your answer. - Check for transfer-restriction language
Look at the charter or investment agreement for a transfer restriction clause. If it's there, any unapproved deal is void by definition. - Watch the payment method
A request for crypto, or an overseas wire to an individual instead of an entity, is a red flag on its own. - Vet the dealmaker's track record
Real name, past deals, references you can actually check. The real signal is whether a company's own CFO would introduce them to other investors, the way Ernest's has. - Ask about the fee structure
Standard SPV terms are 0% management fee plus 5-10% carry. Anything way above that should raise questions.
Want to go deeper?
How Justin Ernest invested nearly $500M into hot startups The original piece on Sabertooth Capital's SPV strategy techcrunch.com
Anthropic warns investors against secondary platforms Anthropic's official warning naming the 8 unauthorized platforms techcrunch.com
Unauthorized Anthropic stock sales and investment scams Anthropic's own breakdown of unauthorized sale patterns and how to respond support.claude.com
How one VC invested $400M in Anthropic and SpaceX An analysis of Ernest's SPV model, including how the venture industry is reacting techbuzz.ai
Jeff Bezos' Family Office Accelerates AI Bets How family offices are betting directly on AI startups without going through VCs pymnts.com
Special Purpose Vehicles in Venture Capital A comparison of fee and carry structures between SPVs and traditional funds govclab.com
