Anthropic's seven co-founders are each expected to sell 3.378 million shares in the company's IPO, and based on the midpoint of the public offering price of $74 per share, each is expected to cash out about $250 million. According to Anthropic's latest S-1 filing, the initial price range for this IPO is $70 to $78 per share, meaning each founder's cash-out amount would be roughly $236 million to $264 million.
The seven co-founders include CEO Dario Amodei, President and Chair of the Board Daniela Amodei, as well as Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Christopher Olah. Even after the share sale is completed, each founder is expected to continue holding about 3.2% of the issued Class A shares, with the seven collectively accounting for about 22%. In addition, each founder will receive one share of Class F stock with super-voting rights, and together the seven will control 51.1% of the company's voting rights, continuing to maintain control over the company.
This IPO also demonstrates the market's attention on Anthropic. Director Reed Hastings is expected to subscribe to $300 million worth of shares through a Donor Advised Fund, while another director, Christopher Liddell, is expected to subscribe to $3 million. Anthropic's IPO valuation is expected to reach up to about $1.4 trillion.
Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI members, including Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei. At the time, the founding team left OpenAI due to differences in philosophy regarding AI research and development, and made artificial intelligence safety a key development direction for the company. This partial cash-out by the founders, occurring while they retain a large number of voting rights, reflects that Anthropic wants to advance fundraising from the capital markets while maintaining the founding team's leadership over the company's strategy.
