Anthropic’s 7 cofounders are splitting $200 billion almost evenly down to the last option
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind Claude, plans to split $200 billion among its seven cofounders.
The short version
- Each founder holds a stake worth up to $30 billion if the IPO hits a $2 trillion valuation.
- The rare flat pay structure gives every cofounder an nearly identical share.
When Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, goes public, the stock its seven cofounders hold stands to be worth up to $200 billion between them, carved up into seven nearly identical piles. Each cofounder holds a stake of between 231 million and 244 million shares, according to Fortune.
Those stakes would be worth about $21 billion to $30 billion apiece, if Anthropic’s initial public offering values the company at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, as some media reports have indicated the company hopes to do. The approach completely flattens the idea of the pyramid-shaped pay structure you find at most mega-cap public companies with a CEO or founder at the top making the most in cash and equity.
At Anthropic, the core septet has no apparent pay pyramid, despite Dario Amodei serving as CEO alongside Daniela Amodei as president and board chairperson. The seven appear to hold nearly identical stakes, and each gets one vote in the entity that will control the company’s shareholder vote.
Robin Ferracone, founder of compensation consulting firm Farient Advisors, said the egalitarian approach Anthropic took with its founder group is unusual. The Amodeis as cofounders take equal pay, including annual increases to cash or equity, with both brother and sister now taking home $1.4 million in salary.
The other five cofounders (Tom Brown, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, Jack Clark, and Chris Olah) hold top technical titles and hold identical numbers of options and restricted stock units that will vest by late November. The approach is worlds away from Elon Musk at SpaceX, where one person takes the vast majority of stock awards.
And unlike SpaceX, each Anthropic founder has pledged to give 80% of their stock to philanthropy, which could amount to an $80 billion to $165 billion total gift. The founders can’t sell stock right away, but the magnificent seven can start selling a portion of their stock about six months after the offering and the rest after about a year.
