Several institutional investors—specifically endowments and foundations—reaped the rewards of SpaceX’s initial public offering, with many of them posting double-digit returns driven not only by that company’s IPO but also the broader artificial intelligence investment theme.
The AI theme has been a driver of returns across most asset classes, contributing to another year of strong performance for public pension funds in the 2026 fiscal year. With Anthropic set to IPO next week, the Equable Institute, in a report, identified a number of public pension funds with Anthropic exposure—including 18 invested with funds invested in Anthropic and least 28 with suspected exposure.
Anthropic’s offering prospectus, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, lists all entities holding more than 5% of its shares before it goes public. The analysis, by public pension research organization Equable, of the company’s S-1 filing found a half-dozen private funds listed in the prospectus, all managed by Spark Capital.
Anthropic is targeting a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion in its IPO—set to occur on Thursday, November 19. The company will offer 825 million shares priced between $70 to $78 a share. Approximately 6% of its total shares will float as part of the IPO.
“We were curious ahead of the IPO what public sector pension plans were invested in Anthropic. We noticed that there actually was not a lot of public disclosure around this,” says Anthony Randazzo, Equable’s CEO.
“Only two public pension officials, the North Carolina state treasurer and the New York City comptroller, … had publicly commented that they had some Anthropic holdings. … Beyond that, there wasn’t a lot of discussion around what public pension funds would be invested through the private equity rounds that [the company] raised money through,” Randazzo says.
Equable identified more than 18 public funds that are limited partners in Spark Capital’s various funds. The firm also identified 28 possible public funds that are limited partners in Insight Partners XII fund, whose manager is an investor in Anthropic, although not through all of its funds.
The pension funds with the most committed capital in Spark’s vehicles include the Texas County & District Retirement System, with $210 million committed across three funds; the South Carolina Retirement System Investment Commission, with $110 million committed across two funds; the Orange County Employees’ Retirement System, which committed $101.6 million across three funds; and the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Trust, which committed $104 million across three funds.
Additional pension funds with Anthropic exposure through Spark include the California State Teachers Retirement System, the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System, the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, the Washington State Investment Board, and the Nebraska Investment Council.
“We think the bigger question for public plans is … that almost every public pension plan is about to become an owner of Anthropic over the next several months,” Randazzo says, acknowledging that once public, the company’s stock will be in most U.S. equity indexes. “Whether that is because of their internal strategies of synthetically building indices, or if they’re passive investors in index funds that are going to be required to buy into Anthropic based on its size.”
Equable estimates that 35.1% of U.S. public pension funds’ public equity holdings were invested in AI-related companies, which it equates to AI exposure of about $578 billion in public pension funds, and growing.
“Over the next several months, almost every public pension plan will own some, whether they want to or not. That adds to portfolios already heavily concentrated in AI,” according to the Equable report.
