Anthropic IPO filing shows cofounders worth $13B+ each

Anthropic's long-awaited IPO prospectus shows that each of its seven cofounders owns almost the same stake in the company, roughly 240 million shares apiece, worth well over $13 billion each before the stock has even started trading. The company filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday and plans to list its Class A stock on the Nasdaq ↘ 0.34% Global Select Market under the symbol "ANT," according to Anthropic's announcement.fortune.com

Fortune priced the shares at $58.90, the split-adjusted price from Anthropic's Series H round this spring. On that basis, each founder's stake is worth between $13.7 billion and $14.4 billion, and the seven together hold about 10% of the company. Fortune estimated that each founder owns about 1.4%, and that a $2 trillion listing would put each stake at roughly $27 billion to $29 billion. Forbes used the $965 billion valuation from Anthropic's May funding round and came out a little lower, starting at about $13.1 billion per founder.businessinsider.com+1

A cofounder ahead of the CEO

Chief compute officer Tom Brown has the largest stake, at about 244 million shares. That is slightly more than CEO Dario Amodei, who owns 240.6 million shares and also holds voting proxies over another 4.6 million, Business Insider reported. According to the filing, Brown led engineering on GPT-3 while he was at OpenAI. The next-largest holders are Chris Olah, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark and president Daniela Amodei. Chief architect Sam McCandlish has the smallest stake, at about 231.8 million shares, Fortune found. The other 4.6 million shares tied to Dario Amodei are in donor-advised funds, so he no longer owns them.businessinsider.com+1

The filing does not yet give a price range or a share count, so the final values could change. The Next Web, citing The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↘ 2.12%, reported that the offering could value Anthropic at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.thenextweb.com

Pledges, but control stays

Each cofounder has pledged to give 80% of their Anthropic equity to philanthropy. The filing describes these pledges as "voluntary, revocable expressions" of intent and says they are not legally binding, Fortune reported. Giving shares away will not cost the founders control. A single Class F share, held by an LLC that the seven own, will carry 50.1% of the company's total voting power, according to Business Insider.fortune.com+1

The prospectus itself warns that as the founders donate, "their personal economic interests in us will decrease while their voting control through the Founder LLC will remain unchanged."

Other big winners

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. ↗ 1.61% and Google Alphabet Inc. ↗ 0.84% will each own more than 5% of Anthropic after the IPO conversions, Business Insider reported. Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ↗ 2.07% and Morgan Stanley ↗ 1.86% lead the group of underwriters, according to CNBC. The founders face a standard 180-day lockup, which those two banks can waive early, Fortune noted.cnbc.com+2