It pays to be a founder of Anthropic, and there are seven of them, all of whom soon stand to make tens of billions of dollars.

Anthropic’s S-1 shows that its seven cofounders hold enormous stakes in one of the fastest-growing companies in Silicon Valley history. One cofounder, little known outside the company, owns more shares than CEO Dario Amodei.

Large founder allocations are not unusual in Silicon Valley. Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, for example, retained enough super-voting stock to control about 89% of the voting power after the company’s 2017 IPO. What makes Anthropic unique is the number of founders with huge stakes and how evenly those stakes are divided.

The filing does not yet disclose Anthropic’s expected IPO price or the number of shares it plans to sell, meaning it’s not yet possible to put an exact dollar value on those holdings. The company was valued at $965 billion in May and is expected to be valued at more than $1.5 trillion when it goes public in a few weeks. Anthropic applied to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.”

Anthropic cofounder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown owns about 244 million shares of the AI startup, according to its S-1 filed Monday. That narrowly tops the stakes of Anthropic’s six other cofounders, who each own roughly 232 million to 243 million shares.

At a $1.5 trillion valuation, Brown’s Anthropic stake could be worth roughly $24 billion.

Brown co-founded Anthropic with the Amodei siblings and four others in January 2021. He now serves as chief compute officer, where he leads the technical organization responsible for “securing, scaling, and effectively using” Anthropic’s computing resources, according to the filing.

Brown also played an important role in the technology that led to today’s generative-AI boom.

Before Anthropic, he worked at OpenAI, where the S-1 says he led the engineering of GPT-3. Brown and Dario Amodei also co-invented what Anthropic calls “deep RLHF,” which the company said was central to transforming base large language models into conversational assistants such as Claude.

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After Brown, cofounder Christopher Olah has the next-largest disclosed stake, with about 242.9 million shares, followed by chief science officer Jared Kaplan with 242.4 million and Jack Clark with 242.3 million.

Anthropic president Daniela Amodei beneficially owns 241.4 million shares.

CEO Dario Amodei owns 240.6 million shares and also controls voting proxies over another 4.6 million shares.

The founders’ influence will extend far beyond their economic stakes. Immediately before the IPO, Anthropic plans to issue a special Class F share to an LLC controlled by the seven cofounders. That single share will carry 50.1% of Anthropic’s total voting power on matters submitted to stockholders generally, including the election of directors other than those selected by Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust.

In another unusual twist, Anthropic says each of its cofounders has pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal equity in the company to philanthropic causes.

Other winners in the IPO include Google and Amazon

Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies and venture firms also stand to make huge windfalls from Anthropic’s public-market debut.

Amazon and Google will each own more than 5% of Anthropic after the IPO conversions, making them two of the company’s largest strategic shareholders. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, they each stand to make more than $75 billion in the offering.

Google has been one of Anthropic’s largest strategic backers and owned 14% of the company last year, according to legal filings.

Among traditional venture firms, the filing provides unusually detailed numbers for Spark Capital because Spark partner Yasmin Razavi sits on Anthropic’s board and was the first firm to invest when Anthropic was valued at $4.5 billion in 2023. Spark-affiliated funds have invested across at least six Anthropic financings since 2023.

Menlo Ventures led a round in 2024 when Anthropic was valued at about $18 billion. They have now invested over $1.3 billion in the company, also earning them a stake between 1.5% and 2%, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is the largest venture shareholder, owning almost 2% of Anthropic, according to a person familiar with the matter. They led a round at a $61.5 billion valuation in late 2024 and continued to double down.

Iconiq also amassed a large stake by investing $6 billion in the company, according to a person familiar with the matter, giving the firm an ownership stake between 1.5% and 2%.

Bessemer Venture Partners first invested in the Series D in 2024 and continued to write checks in every round since. It has spent around $800 million in Anthropic, making it the firm’s largest investment to date. Bessemer has an almost 1% stake in Anthropic, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Other major winners include Coatue, which has invested $4.75 billion, and Sound Ventures, which invested more than $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Other major shareholders include Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Mubadala and Founders Fund.

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