Schmidt's Anthropic Stake Set for $20 Billion

Artificial intelligence (AI) startups have become worth trillions of Korean won in just a few years. This has greatly increased the money early investors can make. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, is one example. He invested tens of millions of dollars in the AI startup Anthropic when it was still young. If Anthropic becomes worth as much as $2 trillion when it first sells shares to the public, his stake could be worth $20 billion, or about 26.7 trillion Korean won.

Bloomberg reported on October 19, local time, that Schmidt invested in Anthropic's Series A funding round in 2021. He now owns about 1% of the company. At that time, Anthropic was worth only $461 million. Its value later rose to $965 billion in its most recent funding round. Investors are now discussing a possible value of $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion. If the company reaches the higher figure, its value will have grown about 4,300 times in just five years.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Schmidt is currently worth about $57.5 billion. If Anthropic reaches a value of $2 trillion, his total wealth could rise to nearly $80 billion. Since leaving his role as Google's CEO, Schmidt has invested in hundreds of startups. More recently, he has focused on AI companies, including Mistral AI, Reflection AI, and World Labs. If Anthropic successfully sells shares to the public, it would be his biggest investment success since he bought an early stake in Uber in 2011.

Anthropic plans to begin officially promoting its planned share sale to large investors as early as the week starting on the 9th of next month. The company aims to enter the stock market before Thanksgiving. Based on its current estimated value, each of its seven co-founders is thought to have a fortune of about $8 billion.