Google’s ex-CEO Eric Schmidt holds 1% stake in Anthropic; bet may pay off big in IPO
- Published on October 20, 2026, at 02:56 PM IST
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt owns about 1% of Anthropic. This could make him one of the people who benefit most from the artificial intelligence startup’s planned initial public offering (IPO), Bloomberg News reported on Monday.
Schmidt invested tens of millions of dollars in Anthropic’s Series A funding round, the report said. It cited people who know about the matter. It is not clear whether he has sold any of his shares since then.
Anthropic and Schmidt’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The AI startup’s planned IPO is expected to bring large returns to its early investors and employees. However, investors still disagree about how much the company could be worth.
Reuters reported last week that some investors discussed a value of about $1.5 trillion at an investor meeting. This is lower than earlier expectations of about $2 trillion.
In its IPO prospectus, which Reuters saw in September, Anthropic explained how it believes AI could change the world economy even more deeply than industrialisation, electricity and the internet did.
Amazon and Google were among Anthropic’s early investors. They committed billions of dollars to the company and provided the cloud computing power needed to develop and run its Claude AI models.
Schmidt was Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011. He later became executive chairman of its parent company, Alphabet. He left that position in January 2018.
- Published on October 20, 2026, at 02:56 PM IST