Anthropic’s Seven Co-Founders to Sell $1.75 Billion of Stock in IPO

Seven co-founders of artificial intelligence company Anthropic plan to sell a combined $1.75 billion of their holdings through the company’s initial public offering.

Bloomberg reported on Nov. 11 that Anthropic said in an amended registration statement filed that day that the seven co-founders each plan to sell about $250 million of stock. The estimate is based on the midpoint of the proposed offering range.

Anthropic plans to raise as much as $90.4 billion through the IPO and a private placement. The company has been valued at about $1.4 trillion. The offering price is scheduled to be set on Nov. 18, with trading to begin on Nov. 19. At that valuation, each co-founder’s net worth would be about $18 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The sale will include Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Christopher Olah. Even so, the shares being sold represent only about 1.5% of each founder’s total stake.

Large stock sales by founders during an IPO are often viewed as a negative signal. Jay Ritter, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida, said the amount is clearly large in dollar terms, but added that markets have become increasingly accustomed to founders and major shareholders cashing out part of their stakes.

Ritter cited Google’s 2004 IPO, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin each sold about $41 million of stock and then-Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt sold about $31 million. “There is clearly a precedent,” he said.

The Anthropic founders’ stock sale also appears intended to secure liquidity by cashing out part of their wealth. Dario and Daniela Amodei each received about $650,000 in cash compensation last year, but most of their wealth is held in Anthropic shares. The two also sold some stock through programs to purchase shares from existing shareholders in June last year and April this year.

“Sometimes people have enormous wealth, but most of it is tied up in stock of a single company and they do not have much cash,” Ritter said. In that situation, the market is unlikely to be very concerned about a sale of a small portion of their holdings, he added.