Schmidt's 1% Anthropic Stake Lines Up $80B IPO Windfall

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt owns roughly 1% of Anthropic, a stake that could rank among the largest individual windfalls from the Claude maker's planned IPO, Bloomberg reports.

Schmidt put tens of millions of dollars into Anthropic's Series A in 2021, when the company was valued at $461 million. According to the Bloomberg write-up, "prospective investors now suggest a public valuation could reach between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion, a figure that would represent more than 4,300 times its Series A baseline."

At the top of that range, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his net worth could increase by about one-third, approaching $80 billion. At Anthropic's most recent private mark of $965 billion, the stake is worth nearly $10 billion on top of his existing $57.5 billion fortune. Some investors have more recently been pitched valuations closer to $1.5 trillion, below the earlier $2 trillion target.

Anthropic is preparing to kick off formal marketing for the listing as early as the week of November 9. Both Schmidt and the company declined to comment, and it is not clear whether he has sold any portion of his position in the secondary market.

The pre-IPO scramble has thickened in the past week. OpenAI is reportedly racing to lock a $30 billion round at a $1.4 trillion-plus valuation before Anthropic prices.