The artificial-intelligence world is awash with speculation over Anthropic's plans to go public this year. Investors trying to parse market sentiment may want to look in am unexpected place: an exchange-traded fund.

Anthropic is targeting a valuation of more than $2 trillion in an initial public offering this year-possibly in mid-late November-Reuters reported overnight, citing the company's prospectus.

Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO in June, so its plans and prospectus have remained almost entirely a secret until now. Anthropic didn't immediately respond to a Barron's request for comment early Tuesday.

Getting to Anthropic's sweeping vision of an AI future will be extremely expensive, with the company reporting a net loss of $42 billion in 2025 and planning to spend $518 billion on infrastructure in the coming years, Reuters reported. On an operating basis, the company's annual loss was more than $8 billion.

That's to say nothing of the document highlighting AI could pose an "existential risk to humanity," according to the report-echoing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's repeated warnings for AI labs to proceed with caution.

It is important to understand how the market views Anthropic's IPO plans-and not just for investors considering buying into the AI powerhouse behind the Claude chatbot. Sentiment over AI in general, including spending on infrastructure, has been instrumental in moving the biggest tech stocks, from Nvidia to Amazon.com and Microsoft.

Investors should look at the Anthropic AI Lab Ecosystem ETF, an actively managed fund that launched in August and focuses on companies linked to the AI company.

The fund's 10 largest holdings-making up almost a third of the portfolio-include megacap names in cloud computing like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, as well as chip names like Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, and Micron Technology.

But the fund also includes more niche names in digital infrastructure, such as those in data centers like TeraWulf, Hut 8 Corp, and Riot Platforms, as well as networking specialist Astera Labs.

Many of the ANTW ETF's holdings were up on Tuesday amid a broad rally in chip and AI names, and the fund itself was up 1.0%. That suggests there was little in the report which surprised the market.

Nevertheless, the ETF will be one to watch for shifting sentiment as Anthropic's planned IPO draws closer and more details trickle out.