Anthropic's seven co-founders set for $250 million each in IPO
Anthropic's seven co-founders each hold about 240,000,000 shares worth $17 billion to $18 billion at the IPO price range, and plan to sell about $250 million of stock each — while keeping majority voting control.
A defection over AI safety
Four researchers, a former journalist, a public policymaker and an engineer founded Anthropic in 2021, after leaving OpenAI at the end of 2020 over concerns about AI safety. Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei were vice presidents at OpenAI, and they took five colleagues with them: Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Chris Olah.
Five years later, the company is about to go public in one of the biggest IPOs on record. Anthropic set a price range of $70 to $78 per share, which implies a market value of nearly $1.4 trillion, and trading is expected to begin on Nov. 19, CNBC reported.
'None of us wanted to found a company. We just felt like it was our duty,' chief architect Sam McCandlish said in a company video.
What each founder stands to make
Collectively, the seven co-founders own about 10% of Anthropic. Each holds about 240,000,000 Class A shares, or about a 1.4% stake, and chief executive Dario Amodei holds the most, with 245,259,100 shares including shares subject to voting proxies.
At $58.90 a share, the value in Anthropic's most recent funding round, each founder's stake was worth about $14 billion. At the IPO range of $70 to $78, those stakes would be worth $17 billion to $18 billion.
The founders also plan to sell in the offering. Each will offer 3,378,378 shares, or about $250 million at the $74 midpoint of the range, for a combined $1.75 billion. The shares are being sold by the founders, so the proceeds go to them rather than to the company, according to the filing.
Control, and a promise to give it away
While the seven founders own only about 10% of Anthropic's equity, they will hold a majority of the votes. A legal entity called Founder LLC owns a single Class F share that carries 50.1% of the voting power. Benjamin Mann, a member of Anthropic's technical staff who is often called a co-founder, is not an owner of Founder LLC.
The founders also plan to give most of the wealth away. They plan to dedicate 80% of the wealth from their personal Anthropic equity to philanthropy, according to the IPO filing, though the pledge is not legally binding. Anthropic is also setting aside 5% of its shares to form a new public benefit fund to finance nonprofits, research and community grants.
The seven bring different backgrounds to the company. Dario Amodei, 43, is chief executive and a Princeton-trained neuroscientist who co-invented reinforcement learning from human feedback. Daniela Amodei, 39, is president and board chair. Tom Brown, 39, is chief compute officer and led the training of GPT-3 at OpenAI. Jack Clark, 37, a former journalist, heads public benefit. Jared Kaplan, 42, is chief science officer and co-pioneered scaling laws. Sam McCandlish, 36, is chief architect. Chris Olah, 34, leads interpretability research.
- $250 millionCash each co-founder plans to raise by selling shares
- $1.75 billionTotal the seven founders plan to sell in the IPO
- $17 billion to $18 billionValue of each founder's stake at the $70 to $78 IPO range
- 50.1%Voting control the founders keep through one Class F share
- 80%Share of personal Anthropic wealth the founders plan to give away
- 5%Shares Anthropic is setting aside for a new public benefit fund
