As Anthropic moves towards a massive IPO, this transaction could push the company's valuation to $1.4 trillion. In the latest submitted S-1 document, the company disclosed a detail: how many shares each of the seven co-founders plan to sell.
Each founder will sell 3,378,378 shares. The initial offering price range provided by Anthropic is exceptionally wide, ranging from $70 to $78 per share. Calculated at the mid-range of $74 per share, each founder will receive just under $250 million.
If calculated based on the lower limit of $70 per share, each person will receive just over $236 million in cash; if calculated based on the upper limit of $78 per share, each person will receive just under $264 million.
However, in highly anticipated events like this IPO, the final pricing by the company often tends to be higher than the initial range.
S-1 The document has already shown signs of strong demand. Board member Reed Hastings stated that he hopes to purchase shares worth $300 million through his suggested donation fund. Board member Christopher Liddell also wishes to buy shares worth $3 million.
The seven co-founders are as follows: Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei; President and Chairman of the Board of Directors Daniela Amodei; Chief Computing Power Officer Tom Brown; Public Interest Officer Jack Clark; Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan (the person in the picture above); Chief Architect Sam McCandlish; and Head of Explainability Research Christopher Olah.
After the sale, according to the S-1 document, each of them will hold approximately 3.2% of the issued Class A common shares, which together accounts for about 22%. However, this does not equate to their overall shareholding in the company. Class A shares are just one of the various equity categories under Anthropic. Other holders, including Amazon and Google, hold Class N shares that do not carry voting rights, so the founders' proportion of total company equity is significantly smaller. Nevertheless, as a group, they still control the company. Each founder will also receive one Class F share, which grants super voting rights. In total, the founders will control 51.1% of the voting rights, but no single founder's shareholding or voting rights will be significantly higher than that of the others.
As is well known in the industry today, these seven individuals left OpenAI in 2021 due to disagreements with the management of OpenAI regarding how artificial intelligence should be developed. Subsequently, they founded Anthropic. Dario and Daniela Amodei previously held senior research and policy positions at OpenAI; later, five more former colleagues from OpenAI joined them to co-found this company. From its inception, Anthropic has openly stated that it places greater emphasis on artificial intelligence security than its competitors, including the companies where its founders used to work.
