Banker offers $4.8M Bay Area estate in exchange for Anthropic stock

2 min readUpdated April 27, 2026

Storm Duncan, the founder and managing partner of tech boutique investment bank Ignatious, is offering to swap his $4.8 million Marin County estate for Anthropic stock, as demand for shares in the AI company outpaces supply on secondary markets.

Since going public with the offer earlier this week, Duncan has fielded multiple inquiries — some from Anthropic employees, others from people who got in as early investors. He described the prospective deals as credible but complicated. "I believe they're serious, but it's a complex transaction," he told Business Insider.

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Duncan now makes his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and owns properties elsewhere, but he singled out the Mill Valley estate as the right bait for Anthropic staff. "It's a 20-minute commute to the Anthropic offices in the city," he told Business Insider. "No one from Anthropic probably wants my Miami or Jackson Hole place."

According to TechCrunch, the arrangement is designed to keep the exchange off public markets, meaning a seller would hand over shares without triggering an outright sale. Duncan has also committed to covering closing costs and has pledged on LinkedIn to let the counterparty keep 20% of whatever appreciation accrues on the exchanged shares through any lockup period.

Anthropic is not a new holding for Duncan — he picked up shares during the company's 2024 fundraising round. What pushed him to seek additional exposure, he told Business Insider, was rolling out Claude Code at Ignatious and liking what he saw. "It's probably going to triple our throughput and reduce our costs by 50%," he said.

For Duncan, the pitch is straightforward symmetry: he wants AI exposure, while Anthropic insiders may be sitting on enormous paper wealth that remains locked up and untouchable until an IPO. He pointed to engineers pulling down $400,000 salaries who are technically worth $100 million yet can't touch their holdings. "This gives them an opportunity to diversify," he said.

Getting into Anthropic directly has become functionally impossible for mid-sized investors; secondary market trades have pushed the company's implied valuation to $1 trillion, according to Business Insider, and Duncan said the company only engages with parties capable of deploying $100 million or more in a single transaction — well beyond his reach.

The LinkedIn post has drawn its share of skeptics, with some social media commenters calling it a bubble-top signal or a shameless grab for attention, while others joked that Bay Area homes and Anthropic stock are equally impossible to come by. Duncan maintains he is entirely serious about making the trade happen.

An investment banker is trying to swap his Bay Area estate for Anthropic shares

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