It pays to be one of Anthropic’s founders, and there are seven of them, all of whom are expected to soon make tens of billions of dollars.
Anthropic’s S-1 shows its seven co-founders own huge stakes in one of the fastest-growing companies in Silicon Valley history. A co-founder, little known outside the company, owns more shares than CEO Dario Amodei.
Large founder allocations are not unusual in Silicon Valley. Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, for example, retained enough high-voting shares to control about 89% of the voting power after the company’s IPO in 2017. What makes Anthropic unique is the number of founders with enormous stakes and how those stakes are evenly distributed.
The filing does not yet disclose Anthropic’s planned IPO price or the number of shares it plans to sell, meaning it is not yet possible to put an exact dollar value on these holdings. The company was valued at $965 billion in May and is expected to be valued at more than $1.5 trillion when it goes public in a few weeks. Anthropic has filed to list on Nasdaq under the symbol “ANT”.
Anthropic co-founder and CIO Tom Brown owns about 244 million shares of the AI startup, according to his S-1 filed Monday. That narrowly exceeds the stakes of Anthropic’s six other co-founders, who each own between 232 million and 243 million shares.
At a valuation of $1.5 trillion, Brown’s stake in Anthropic could be worth around $24 billion.
Brown co-founded Anthropic with the Amodei siblings and four others in January 2021. He now serves as CIO, where he leads the technical organization responsible for “securing, scaling, and efficiently utilizing” Anthropic’s IT resources, according to the filing.
Brown also played an important role in the technology that led to the current boom in generative AI.
Before Anthropic, he worked at OpenAI, where S-1 says he led the engineering of GPT-3. Brown and Dario Amodei also co-invented what Anthropic calls “deep RLHF,” which the company said was key to turning large, basic language models into conversational assistants like Claude.
After Brown, co-founder Christopher Olah has the second-largest disclosed stake, with approximately 242.9 million shares, followed by chief scientific officer Jared Kaplan with 242.4 million and Jack Clark with 242.3 million.
Anthropic Chairman Daniela Amodei beneficially owns 241.4 million shares.
CEO Dario Amodei owns 240.6 million shares and also controls voting proxies on an additional 4.6 million shares.
The influence of the founders will extend well beyond their economic issues. Immediately prior to the IPO, Anthropic plans to issue special Class F stock to an LLC controlled by the seven co-founders. This single share will hold 50.1% of Anthropic’s total voting rights on matters submitted to shareholders generally, including the election of directors other than those selected by Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust.
In another unusual twist, Anthropic says each of its co-founders has committed to dedicating 80% of their equity in the company to philanthropic causes.
Other IPO winners include Google and Amazon
Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies and venture capital firms are also expected to reap huge profits from Anthropic’s public market debut.
Amazon and Google will each own more than 5% of Anthropic after the IPO conversions, making them two of the company’s largest strategic shareholders. With a valuation of $1.5 trillion, they are each expected to bring in more than $75 billion in the offering.
Google has been one of Anthropic’s largest strategic backers and owned 14% of the company last year, according to legal documents.
Among traditional venture capital firms, the filing provides unusually detailed numbers for Spark Capital, as Spark partner Yasmin Razavi sits on Anthropic’s board and was the first firm to invest when Anthropic was valued at $4.5 billion in 2023. Funds affiliated with Spark have invested in at least six Anthropic financings since 2023.
Menlo Ventures led a funding round in 2024 when Anthropic was valued at around $18 billion. They have now invested more than $1.3 billion in the company, which also gives them a stake of between 1.5% and 2%, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Lightspeed Venture Partners is the largest venture shareholder, owning nearly 2% of Anthropic, according to a person familiar with the matter. They led a funding round with a valuation of $61.5 billion at the end of 2024 and continued to double their stake.
Iconiq also acquired a significant stake by investing $6 billion in the company, according to a person familiar with the matter, giving the company a stake of between 1.5% and 2%.
Bessemer Venture Partners first invested in the Series D in 2024 and has continued to write checks in every round since. It spent about $800 million on Anthropic, making it the company’s largest investment to date. Bessemer owns nearly 1% of Anthropic, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Other big winners include Coatue, which invested $4.75 billion, and Sound Ventures, which invested more than $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Other major shareholders include Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Mubadala and Founders Fund.
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