Anthropic cofounders are each worth $14 billion ahead of an IPO
Seven artificial intelligence cofounders hold 1.69 billion shares.
The short version
- Each stake sits near $14 billion at recent prices.
- Wall Street estimates point to a $2 trillion valuation.
- That could double each founder's fortune to $29 billion.
- They have pledged to give most of it away.
Seven people who quit OpenAI to cofound Anthropic in January 2021 are each worth about $14 billion already, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reported by Fortune. Five and a half years later, each cofounder owns roughly 240 million shares, or about 1.4% of the artificial intelligence company.
At $58.90 a share from the company's spring private funding round, those stakes sit between $13.7 billion and $14.4 billion. If Anthropic lists at a $2 trillion valuation, each cofounder's stake could double to between $27 billion and $29 billion. Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of Anthropic, holds 245 million shares, moving him to the top of the ownership table.
All seven cofounders are listed as selling stockholders, though the filing leaves the number of shares each plans to sell blank. Each cofounder has pledged to give 80% of their personal equity to philanthropic causes, though the filings note those pledges are voluntary and revocable.
Giving away stock will not cost them control, because a single controlling share held by a founders' LLC carries 50.1% of the company's vote. A cofounder stays in that control group as long as they keep at least 2% of the Class A shares they held at the initial public offering. That means a cofounder could give away nearly their entire fortune and still help run the company.
Photo: HaeB, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
