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

Zoom's Anthropic stake could be worth over $3 billion if the AI company raises at a $900 billion valuation, versus $1.27 billion at its prior $380 billion round. Zoom also has $7.7 billion in cash and marketable securities, no debt, and generates about $2 billion in annual free cash flow, while core revenue grew 5.5% last quarter and enterprise revenue rose 7.2%. The article argues Zoom may be an indirect way to gain exposure to Anthropic ahead of a potential IPO.

Analysis

The market is effectively misclassifying ZM as a mature slow-growth software name when a meaningful slice of the equity is now a levered venture-style exposure to private AI revaluation. The interesting second-order effect is not just mark-to-market upside on the Anthropic stake; it is optionality on a future monetization event that could force a rerating of the entire balance sheet and compress the implied multiple on the core franchise. In other words, the stock’s downside is increasingly anchored by cash generation and excess liquidity, while the upside is increasingly driven by a venture asset whose value can move faster than operating fundamentals.

This creates a cleaner expression of AI upside than owning the obvious beneficiaries, because ZM is not priced like a hyperscaler or model vendor and therefore has less narrative premium to give back if Anthropic stumbles. The risk, however, is timing: private-markets marks can outrun public-market realizations for quarters or even years, and any delay in an IPO or structured financing could leave investors with a value trap framed as an AI proxy. The core business still needs to avoid re-accelerating deceleration; if enterprise growth stalls, the market can re-anchor on the software multiple before the Anthropic asset is monetized.

The overlooked competitive dynamic is that a stronger Anthropic may actually support enterprise software procurement trends broadly, but ZM has only a limited direct operating leverage to that ecosystem. The better trade is to own the balance sheet optionality, not to underwrite a full operating turnaround. The setup is most attractive into any post-IPO or funding-round hype cycle where public investors extrapolate private marks but have not yet forced a cleaner sum-of-the-parts rerating.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long ZM on a 3-6 month horizon as a sum-of-the-parts / private-markets lag trade; entry is strongest on any pullback toward the implied value of the core business net of cash, with upside from another step-up in Anthropic marks and limited balance-sheet downside.
• Buy ZM Jan-2027 calls or call spreads to capture delayed catalyst risk; risk/reward is favorable because time decay is better suited to a multi-quarter private valuation repricing than spot equity ownership.
• Pair trade: long ZM / short a basket of mature software names with weak balance sheets and no venture optionality; this isolates the hidden private-asset catalyst while neutralizing generic SaaS multiple risk.
• Do not chase AMZN or GOOGL here as proxy beneficiaries; their upside from Anthropic is already crowded and less asymmetric, while ZM still trades with a discount to the embedded optionality.
• Use any confirmed Anthropic financing or IPO filing as a de-risking point rather than an initiation point; the best risk/reward is before the market fully prices the mark-to-market uplift.