Want to Invest in Anthropic? Here's the Sneaky Stock to Buy.

Zoom’s Anthropic stake is now valued at $1.27 billion and could exceed $3 billion if Anthropic raises at a $900 billion valuation, implying Anthropic may account for about 13% of Zoom’s enterprise value. Zoom also has $7.7 billion in cash and marketable securities, no debt, and generates roughly $2 billion in annual free cash flow. Core operations are stabilizing, with quarterly revenue up 5.5%, enterprise revenue up 7.2%, and $100,000+ customers up 8.2%.

Analysis

The market is likely underpricing how much Zoom’s equity value has become a leveraged call option on private-market revaluation, not just on its own operating turnaround. The key second-order effect is that any incremental uplift in Anthropic’s mark flows through twice: first to Zoom’s reported investment value, then to a lower implied multiple on the core business, which can mechanically support the stock even if the conferencing franchise only grows low-single-digits. That makes ZM less of a pure software re-rating story and more of a balance-sheet optionality trade with a cash-flow backstop.

The cleaner read on winners is not the obvious AI mega-caps, but the “embedded venture arm” set where minority stakes can dominate market perception without being reflected in consensus models. The risk is that this becomes a crowded narrative once Anthropic moves toward financing or IPO: the market may already be discounting a large share of the mark-to-market uplift, and any down-round, delayed listing, or tighter private valuation regime would hit ZM through sentiment before fundamentals. Meanwhile, Zoom’s core business only needs to avoid deceleration; if enterprise growth stalls, the stock can de-rate even with a rising Anthropic mark.

The contrarian miss is that the upside may be less about Anthropic’s absolute valuation and more about the duration of the hold period. If IPO timing slips 12-24 months, the market may continue to assign a liquidity discount to the embedded stake, while the operating business is still priced like a mature software name. That creates a mismatch where the best risk/reward is not chasing ZM after valuation headlines, but owning it when private-marking anxiety temporarily widens the discount between reported NAV and public-market value.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long ZM into any post-news pullback over the next 1-3 weeks; use it as a balance-sheet/venture optionality trade with downside cushioned by cash flow and upside from any private-mark repricing. Risk/reward improves if the stock trades near or below the implied core-business value ex-Anthropic.
• Buy ZM Jan-2027 call spreads rather than outright calls to express Anthropic optionality with limited theta burn. Structure for a 2-3x payoff if the market starts capitalizing a materially higher mark before an IPO is fully accessible.
• Pair trade: long ZM / short a basket of mature SaaS names with weaker cash generation and no embedded private assets over 3-6 months. The thesis is relative re-rating from hidden NAV plus FCF, not generic software beta.
• Fade AMZN and GOOGL as primary Anthropic beneficiaries on a 6-12 month horizon unless they disclose a larger strategic stake or direct monetization path. The market may be over-assigning them “AI winner” credit while the cleaner listed proxy sits in ZM.
• If ZM rallies sharply on valuation headlines, trim 25-50% into strength and keep a core position only. The main tail risk is that expectations front-run the IPO path, leaving little incremental upside from further private rounds.