Mill Valley homeowner seeks Anthropic stock in exchange for 13-acre home

In short: A homeowner in Mill Valley, California says he wants to trade his 13-acre property for equity in Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot.

What happened

Storm Duncan, an investment banker, is offering a 13-acre property in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco, through an unusual kind of deal. Instead of asking for cash, he says he would like to exchange the home for Anthropic equity, meaning ownership shares in the company.

Duncan created a LinkedIn page for the property and asked interested buyers to email him to discuss specifics. According to reporting referenced by TechCrunch, he described the idea as a “diversification” move. In everyday terms, he says he has too much of his wealth tied up in real estate and not enough tied to AI companies.

Duncan suggested an Anthropic employee could be in the opposite position, with company shares but not much property. He also said the deal would be a private transaction and would not require the buyer to sell their shares right away.

On LinkedIn, Duncan wrote that the buyer would keep 20% of any increase in the shares’ value during the lockup period. A lockup period is a set time when employees typically cannot sell certain shares (like being told you have a gift card, but you cannot use it until a later date).

Duncan bought the property in 2019 for $4.75 million, and he said it is currently occupied by a “high profile” venture capitalist, though he did not name them.

Why it matters

This is a small story, but it shows how valuable some private AI company shares have become. For regular people, it is also a reminder that not all “wealth” is cash, and some high-value assets, like startup shares, can be hard to turn into money quickly.

Source: TechCrunch AI