Anthropic's Seven Founders to Cash Out $250 Million Each in IPO

Each of Anthropic's seven co-founders plans to sell 3,378,378 shares in the company's IPO, netting roughly $250 million apiece at the midpoint of the proposed price range. The company disclosed the figures in its new S-1 filing as it moves toward a listing that could value it at $1.4 trillion.

Anthropic has floated an unusually broad initial price range of $70 to $78 per share. At the mid-range price of $74, each founder would take in just shy of $250 million, according to the filing. At the low end of $70, each would pocket just over $236 million; at the high end of $78, each would take in just under $264 million.

The final numbers could climb higher. In an IPO as eagerly anticipated as this one, companies can often price shares above the initial range.

The S-1 already shows signs of outsized demand from the company's own boardroom. Board member Reed Hastings has indicated he wants to buy $300 million worth of shares through his donor-advised fund. Fellow board member Christopher Liddell also wants to purchase $3 million worth of shares.

Who are the seven founders selling shares?

The co-founders span the top of Anthropic's leadership chart:

• Dario Amodei, CEO
• Daniela Amodei, president and chair of the board
• Tom Brown, chief compute officer
• Jack Clark, head of public benefit
• Jared Kaplan, chief science officer
• Sam McCandlish, chief architect
• Christopher Olah, interpretability research lead

After the sale, each of them will own about 3.2% of the total outstanding Class A shares, the S-1 says — roughly 22% collectively. That figure understates the structure of the cap table rather than the founders' power.

How much control will the founders keep?

Class A is just one of Anthropic's share classes, and other holders, including Amazon and Google, hold non-voting Class N shares. The founders' stake in the company's total equity will therefore be considerably smaller than 22%. Even so, they remain in control of the company as a group.

Each founder will also receive one share of Class F stock, which carries supervoting rights. Collectively, the founders will control 51.1% of the votes, though no single founder will hold significantly more shares or votes than the others — a structure that locks in balanced, founder-led governance even as they cash out hundreds of millions each.

Why did they leave OpenAI in 2021?

The origin story is now industry lore. The seven left OpenAI in 2021 to start Anthropic after disagreements with OpenAI's leadership over how AI should be built. Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who held senior research and policy roles at OpenAI, were joined by five fellow OpenAI colleagues in forming the new company.

From the start, Anthropic has said publicly that it is more focused on AI safety than its rivals — including the founders' former employer. That positioning has not slowed its march to a potential $1.4 trillion valuation.

If the IPO prices above its range, as hotly anticipated offerings often do, each founder's payout could push past the $264 million ceiling implied by the current terms — and the listing would cement one of the largest founder windfalls in recent tech history.