Alternative Investing Report - May 7, 2026

In partnership with

*as of 5/6; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, GOLD

As major startups SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic seemingly head towards public offerings, retail demand for their shares has skyrocketed, but getting access is difficult. This has led to a number of companies offering workarounds, and one such innovation comes in the form of crypto tokens. These tokens purport to represent shares of the hottest Pre-IPO companies and are now seeing millions of dollars of daily volume. The platforms Ventuals and PreStocks are open to international investors and claim to offer Pre-IPO exposure. For the Hyperliquid-based Ventuals, it is via perpetual futures with no actual exposure, sort of like a prediction market. For the Solana-based PreStocks, it is tokens that are minted 1:1 against real SPV shares of the companies. The investment platform Republic also partnered with crypto exchange BitGet on IPO Prime, which offered SpaceX tokens on the Solana blockchain to non-U.S. investors.

➨ TAKEAWAY: While these new token options are not viable for U.S. investors, they do represent interesting options for international investors, and importantly, act as price discovery for everyone. Our latest Pre-IPO investor briefing discussed publicly traded options with exposure to the likes of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, which are easiest and cleaner options for U.S. investors.

📊 Private job growth beats expectations: Private companies added 109,000 jobs in April, a solid gain from the 61,000 in March and well above expectations. The strongest hiring pace so far this year was driven by the education and healthcare sectors. The official U.S. jobs report is coming this Friday and will provide a clearer picture of the health of the labor market.

🏡 Home values edge up: The typical home value in the U.S. rose 0.6% in April and 0.7% year-over-year. New listings outpaced home sales for the first time this year, leading to higher inventory, which combined with lukewarm demand will likely keep price growth low.

💵 SEC investigating private credit: The SEC has its eye on the private credit sector and is looking into potential fraud as concerns over risky deals are coming to the fore. Retail investors should be wary of operators without strong track records of transparency, as the sector has loose oversight and losses can pile up quickly.

🤖 Sierra fundraise: The enterprise AI startup Sierra raised $950 million at a $15 billion valuation, a 50% gain over its $10 billion valuation last September. Its AI agents are now used by 40% of the Fortune 50 and the company hit $150 million in annual recurring revenue in February.

🪙 Morgan Stanley crypto trading: After recently launching its own Bitcoin ETF, the Wall Street bank continued its push into digital assets and is now offering crypto trading through its E*Trade platform at lower fees than its competitors.

🎨 Ceramics market: In the past decade, the number of ceramic lots at auction has grown by almost 9x and the total sales volume has more than doubled. Meanwhile, across art fairs, museums, and galleries, ceramics works are becoming more prominent and selling for five and six figures.

Anthropic announced two major partnerships this week, one with Google and one with SpaceX, which as a reminder now owns xAI. The partnership with Google calls for Anthropic to spend $200 billion on Google Cloud and Google’s chips over the next five years, representing 40% of all of Google’s cloud revenue backlog. The deal with SpaceX will provide Anthropic access to the Colossus 1 data center in Tennessee and gives SpaceX a major customer ahead of its anticipated IPO. Anthropic has also expressed interest in working with SpaceX on its ambitious plans to build space-based data centers. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Anthropic and SpaceX announced this partnership while Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI is going, as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is no fan of OpenAI founder Sam Altman either. The massive AI startup version of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.