Eric Schmidt’s 1% Anthropic stake sets up massive windfall ahead of IPO -Bloomberg

Investing.com -- Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, could make one of the biggest personal profits from Anthropic's planned stock market debut, known as an initial public offering (IPO). His possible gain comes from investing early, when the artificial intelligence startup was still growing. According to Bloomberg, Schmidt owns about 1% of Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude chatbot. He got this stake by investing tens of millions of dollars in the company's Series A funding round.

The possible profit from Schmidt's early investment shows how much the value of AI companies has grown in recent years. PitchBook data cited by Bloomberg shows that Anthropic was worth $461 million when Schmidt first invested in 2021. Now, potential investors say the company could be worth between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion when it goes public. That would be more than 4,300 times its value during the Series A funding round.

Bloomberg reports that if Anthropic reaches the top of that estimated value range, Schmidt's wealth could grow by about one-third, reaching nearly $80 billion. Even if the company is worth its most recently reported value of $965 billion, his stake could add about $10 billion to his current fortune of $57.5 billion.

This possible gain also shows how Schmidt has shifted his investments toward advanced AI technology. His investment firms, including TomorrowVentures and Innovation Endeavors, and his family investment office, Hillspire, mainly focused on consumer internet companies and software in the past. Bloomberg reports that he has recently invested in other AI companies, including Mistral AI, Reflection AI, and World Labs, as well as Anthropic.

Sources cited by Bloomberg say Anthropic could begin formally promoting its planned stock market debut as early as the week of November 9. This schedule could allow the company's shares to start trading before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The company is expected to go public by the end of the year at the latest.

Anthropic's planned IPO could be one of the largest stock market offerings ever, as more money continues to flow into companies that develop generative AI. Bloomberg reports that Anthropic expects its offering to match or exceed SpaceX's record-setting $1.77 trillion IPO, which was completed in June.

Eric Schmidt's 1% Anthropic stake sets up massive windfall ahead of IPO -Bloomberg