Pure exposure to the AI supercycle
Shaires Holdings is an AIM-listed vehicle for investors who are enthusiastic about the future of AI and seek exposure to the world’s leading AI leaders and beneficiaries.
There has never been a straightforward way for a public investor to own a piece of Anthropic. Or Stripe. Or ByteDance.
Or any major unlisted US tech company, for that matter.
Technology companies are increasingly being built and funded by private markets, and by the time one of them reaches a stock exchange, the largest gains have usually already gone to the founders, employees and institutions who were there at the start. This usually doesn’t include retail investors.
Shaires Holdings is setting out to close that gap by providing ‘pure exposure to the AI supercycle’, through an AIM-listed share.
The company announced earlier in August binding agreements giving it exposure to seven private technology businesses: Anthropic, Stripe, ByteDance, Figure AI, SandboxAQ, Moonshot AI and Colossal Biosciences.
For a UK retail investor, exposure to this line-up of AI-related firms is almost impossible to find elsewhere.
“Shaires is our answer to that: a permanent vehicle listed in London, where an institution, a retail investor buying through a platform and a founder contributing their own stock all end up owning exactly the same thing, at the same price, at the same time,” explained Vivek Seth, CEO of Shaires.
The access problem
We know that getting into these names has long been the preserve of institutions and insiders. The routes that do exist are narrow: special-purpose vehicles with multi-year lock-ups, gated private funds, and allocations that circulate quietly within founders’ networks.
There are, of course, some available vehicles for these types of companies, but they lack the concentration of exciting AI firms that Shaires provides.
Two kinds of AI companies
The portfolio is split into two groups. The first is the AI Leaders.
These frontier labs build the general-purpose artificial intelligence that powers many of the everyday AI tasks people perform today.
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude models, is now widely considered the leading developer of frontier models after launching a series of powerful models that have overtaken peers such as OpenAI.
It reported a run rate topping US$65 billion by the end of July and was valued at approximately US$965 billion at its most recent primary financing. Many believe it could IPO at a valuation well in excess of a trillion dollars.
Alongside it sits Moonshot AI, one of China’s most closely watched model developers. It recently caused a storm with the launch of its Kimi 3 model, which some called ‘Deepseek 2.0’.
For those unfamiliar with Deepseek, the release of one of its models sparked a major sell-off of US AI stocks because its models were as powerful as US rivals’ but much cheaper to run. The sector continued unabated, but it highlighted the global nature of AI and China’s status as a force to be reckoned with.
The second group is the AI Beneficiaries. These mid- and late-stage private companies are putting that capability to work across robotics, fintech, biosciences and quantum-adjacent compute.
ByteDance applies AI at consumer scale. Stripe runs it through the plumbing of online payments. Figure AI is building humanoid robots. SandboxAQ works at the intersection of AI and quantum. Colossal Biosciences applies it to genetics.
Together, the seven form a high-conviction portfolio of the world’s leading AI-related firms most investors will struggle to gain a holding in.
How does Shaires provide exposure?
Founders and early employees of private companies often hold stock that is worth a fortune on paper and almost impossible to sell, because the company controls its own register.
Shaires gains the shares by issuing its own publicly traded shares in exchange for those holdings. SandboxAQ (US$14.8 million) and Colossal Biosciences (US$12.0 million) were both settled entirely in new Shaires shares rather than cash.
The founders and employees swap their illiquid shares for a quoted, diversified one in Shaires stock.
And, management argues, it is what earns them a seat at the table: a great many investors are offering these companies capital right now, but very few are offering their people a route to liquidity.
Built to grow
The seven holdings appear to be just the start for Shaires.
Shaires is building towards a concentrated portfolio of around fifteen companies, with up to US$500 million of further investment and contribution under negotiation. We don’t know which companies they are yet, but judging by the quality of the first seven, they will be worth keeping an eye on.
“This is the point in the AI cycle we have been waiting for,” said Suhail Rizvi, Executive Chairman of Shaires.
“The pioneering phase of AI, when investors were funding an idea and a team, has largely passed. In front of us now is a set of companies that have crossed from promise into performance. These businesses have products, customers and revenue, and in our judgement most of their adoption is still ahead of them.
“What is scarce at this stage is an orderly route to liquidity for the people who built these companies. Employees and early shareholders hold stock they cannot easily sell. Their alternatives are a fragmented secondary market or several more years of waiting for an event that may never arrive.
“Shaires can be the single long-term holder on the other side of that, with no obligation to sell to a timetable. That is what earns us access, and what we intend to keep building on.”
Shaires is making its portfolio available to retail investors through a retail offer at $20.00, which closes on 24th August.