Anthropic's IPO Could Create 7 New Billionaires. Who Are They
At the price used in Anthropic's latest private funding round, each founder's stake was estimated to be worth between $13.7 billion and $14.4 billion.
The seven co-founders of artificial intelligence company Anthropic could see their personal wealth nearly double if the company goes public at a value of $2 trillion.
According to Anthropic's registration statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the founders together own about 1.69 billion shares, or roughly 10% of the company. If the company is valued at $2 trillion, each founder's shares could be worth between $27 billion and $29 billion.
Anthropic makes the Claude family of AI models. The company has not yet announced the price of its initial public offering (IPO) or how many shares it plans to sell. These estimates are based on a possible company value reported before the listing. They could change when the final details are announced.
According to Business Insider, Anthropic's IPO filing shows that ownership is shared fairly evenly among its seven co-founders. Tom Brown owns slightly more shares than CEO Dario Amodei.
Who Are Anthropic's Seven Co-Founders?
The seven founders left OpenAI and started Anthropic in January 2021. More than five years later, their shares have become extremely valuable as demand for AI models and services has grown sharply.
These figures are estimates, not confirmed measures of each founder's total personal wealth. The final values will depend on the IPO price, the total number of shares after the listing and any changes in what the founders own.
Using the price from Anthropic's latest private funding round, each founder's shares were estimated to be worth between $13.7 billion and $14.4 billion.
Tom Brown Holds the Biggest Stake
Tom Brown, Anthropic's chief compute officer, has the largest reported shareholding among the seven founders, with about 244.2 million shares.
Before joining Anthropic, Brown worked at OpenAI, where he led the engineering work on GPT-3, according to the IPO filing. He also worked with Dario Amodei on a method called deep reinforcement learning from human feedback. This method helped make large language models work as conversational assistants.
Christopher Olah, who leads research into how AI models work and make decisions at Anthropic, has the second-largest reported stake, with about 242.9 million shares. Jared Kaplan and Jack Clark come next, with about 242.4 million and 242.3 million shares, respectively.
Daniela Amodei, Anthropic's president and board chair, owns about 241.4 million shares. Her brother, Dario Amodei, owns about 240.6 million shares, according to the filing's table of people who own or control shares.
Sam McCandlish, Anthropic's chief architect, has the smallest reported holding among the seven founders, with about 231.8 million shares.
Founders Will Keep Significant Voting Power
The chance for the founders to become much wealthier is not the only important part of Anthropic's IPO.
Before the listing, the company plans to issue a special Class F share to a limited liability company controlled by the seven founders. This share will carry 50.1% of the voting power held by all shareholders on certain matters. These include choosing directors who are not appointed by the company's Long-Term Benefit Trust.
This setup could let the founders keep strong control over the company even after its shares begin trading publicly.
The founders have also promised to give 80% of their personal shares in Anthropic to charitable causes. However, the IPO filing says these promises are voluntary and can be withdrawn. They are not legally binding commitments.
The founders have not yet decided when donations will be made, how much will be donated or who will receive the money.
Amazon and Google Could Also Gain
Anthropic's public listing could also bring large gains to its main corporate backers and venture capital investors.
Amazon and Google are expected to remain major shareholders after the IPO. Business Insider reported that each company could own more than 5% of Anthropic once its existing investments are converted into shares.
According to the report, if Anthropic is valued at $1.5 trillion, each company's stake could be worth more than $75 billion.
Several venture capital firms have also invested large amounts of money in Anthropic over the years. These include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Spark Capital, Iconiq and Bessemer Venture Partners.
How much these investors eventually earn will depend on how much of the company they own, the terms of their investments and Anthropic's value when it goes public.
Anthropic IPO: What Investors Should Watch
A possible $2 trillion valuation would make Anthropic one of the most closely watched potential listings in the technology sector. But the company's fast growth also brings high costs and financial risks.
Himanshu Shah, a research analyst at Shoonya, told NDTV that Anthropic's prospectus shows that revenue is growing quickly, while the company is spending heavily on computing equipment and infrastructure.
"Anthropic's prospectus shows hypergrowth paired with extreme capital intensity," Shah said.
He said revenue grew 12 times to about $4.6 billion in 2025, while spending on computing and infrastructure reached $7.33 billion. The company also reported a net loss of $42 billion. However, Shah said that changes in the value of liabilities make this figure less useful. He said the operating loss of more than $8 billion gives a clearer picture of the company's underlying financial performance.
The company's expected value is another major concern. If Anthropic is valued at more than $2 trillion, it would be worth about 430 times its 2025 revenue, based on calculations using the reported figures. Its planned financial commitments of about $518 billion would be more than 100 times its revenue.
"Investors would be paying for sustained exponential growth and eventual margin expansion," Shah said. He added that investors should consider the risks of running the business, raising enough money and keeping AI safe. These include concerns about AI systems behaving unpredictably when acting on their own. "This is a high-risk, long-duration growth story, not a value one," Shah said.