IPO

Anthropic I.P.O.: Each Co-Founder to Cash Out $250 Million

co-produced by AI11. November 2026, 07:44

Dario Amodei, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Anthropic. © World Economic Forum / Sandra Blaser

A quarter of a billion dollars per person sounds like a lot, but for Anthropic’s co-founders it is pocket change.

The seven co-founders of the Claude maker will sell shares worth around $1.75 billion combined in the initial public offering, according to Bloomberg, citing the updated prospectus. Each of them will part with 3.4 million shares, which comes to around $250 million per person before taxes at the midpoint of the $70 to $78 price range. That represents only about 1.5 percent of each founder’s stake.

Seven New Billionaires Worth $18 Billion Each

The seven are chief executive Dario Amodei and his sister, president Daniela Amodei, along with Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Chris Olah. All of them left OpenAI in 2020 to found Anthropic. Each holds around 1.3 percent of Anthropic, which at the targeted valuation of up to $1.4 trillion would be worth around $18 billion apiece. After the last funding round in May, which valued Anthropic at $965 billion, their fortunes stood at around $14 billion each.

The I.P.O. only makes part of that money liquid, though. According to the prospectus, the Amodeis each received a cash salary of around $650,000 last year; most of their wealth is tied up in Anthropic stock. The co-founders have pledged to give away 80 percent of their personal stakes, but the prospectus states that this pledge is "revocable and not legally binding." They keep control nonetheless: through shares with special voting rights, they jointly hold 50.1 percent of the votes and can even designate successors for that control.

From $1.4 Trillion to $1.5 Trillion

Demand for the shares appears to be strong. According to the Financial Times, the entire offering of 825 million shares was covered by orders from institutional investors on the first day of the roadshow. Bankers are reportedly preparing for a valuation of $1.5 trillion or more. At the top of the current price range, Anthropic would be worth $1.405 trillion on a fully diluted basis, as Trending Topics reported. Reaching $1.5 trillion would require an offering price of around $83.

That would boost the co-founders’ proceeds further: at $83 per share, their 3.4 million shares would bring in around $283 million each, almost $2 billion combined, and each stake would be worth around $19.5 billion. The final price will be set next week, with the first day of trading on Nasdaq under the ticker "ANT" planned for the following day.

The valuation is driven by rapid growth. Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate rose to $81 billion in October, up from $71 billion at the end of September. In the first nine months of the year, Anthropic generated $33.2 billion in revenue, according to the prospectus.

Why Skepticism Remains

Despite strong demand, the valuation is contested. Just a week ago, after the sell-off in A.I. stocks following the U.S. midterms, some investors considered only $1 trillion realistic. In the prospectus, Anthropic reports a net loss of $104 billion for the first nine months, almost entirely due to the higher valuation of convertible notes. On top of that come commitments for computing power and infrastructure of around $900 billion, many of them with companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft that are also investors. Critics see this as an example of circular financing in the A.I. sector.

Experts consider the co-founders’ sales themselves unproblematic. I.P.O. expert Jay Ritter of the University of Florida calls them high but not alarming, pointing to Google’s 2004 I.P.O., in which the founders also sold shares.