Anthropic IPO filing calls founders’ 80% pledge nonbinding

Anthropic's seven co-founders have pledged to give 80% of their personal stakes in the AI company to philanthropy. Fortune estimates the promise could be worth about $79.4 billion. The company restated the pledge in the IPO prospectus it made public on Monday, October 26. The same filing says the pledges are not legally binding.fortune.com

The founders are Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Chris Olah. Together they hold roughly 1.69 billion shares. At the price from Anthropic's latest private funding round, those shares are worth about $99.3 billion, Fortune calculated. The S-1 leaves the offering price blank, so the final value is still unknown. Another Fortune analysis said the total gift could reach $80 billion to $165 billion, depending on where the stock trades.fortune.com+1

A promise, not a contract

The prospectus calls the pledges "voluntary, revocable expressions of each cofounder's philanthropic intent" that "do not constitute legally binding obligations," according to Fortune. The filing says "the timing, amount, recipients, structure, and manner of any donations" will depend on several factors, including tax and estate planning and market conditions, Mother Jones reported. The founders could give through charities, private foundations or donor-advised funds.fortune.com+1

Anthropic says the founders made the pledge when they started the company. It also runs a program that matches equity donations from employees, the company said. Around half of its employees take part, Politico reported. Separately, Anthropic has put 5% of its fully diluted shares into a new Public Benefit Fund. Fortune put that stake at about $50 billion at the same private valuation.politico.com+2

Giving away shares, keeping control

Donating stock would not reduce the founders' say over the company. Their Founder LLC will hold a single special share carrying 50.1% of shareholder votes, CNBC reported. A co-founder keeps a seat in the LLC as long as they hold at least 2% of the shares they owned at the IPO. That means a founder could give away 98% of their stake and still vote, Fortune noted. A separate Long-Term Benefit Trust can appoint a majority of the board.cnbc.com+1

A record-setting offering

Anthropic plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker "ANT." Trading could begin as soon as November 16, CNN reported. The offering could raise up to $100 billion and value the company at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, Fortune reported. Revenue reached $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier.cnn.com+1

Dario Amodei laid out the pledge in a January essay about AI's risks. "The thing to worry about is a level of wealth concentration that will break society," he wrote.