All seven co-founders of AI company Anthropic plan to sell an identical number of shares in the company’s upcoming IPO, with each standing to receive approximately $250 million in cash, according to the company’s S-1 filing disclosed in November 2026.
Each founder will sell 3,378,378 shares. Anthropic has set an initial price range of $70 to $78 per share. At the midpoint of $74, each founder would receive just under $250 million. At the low end of $70, that figure drops to just over $236 million; at the high end of $78, it rises to just under $264 million. The IPO could value Anthropic at $1.4 trillion overall.
The seven co-founders are CEO Dario Amodei; Daniela Amodei, president and chair of the board; Tom Brown, chief compute officer; Jack Clark, head of public benefit; Jared Kaplan, chief science officer; Sam McCandlish, chief architect; and Christopher Olah, interpretability research lead. The S-1 filing indicates early demand may be strong — board member Reed Hastings has indicated he wants to purchase $300 million worth of shares through his donor-advised fund, while board member Christopher Liddell has expressed interest in buying $3 million worth.
After the share sale, each founder will hold approximately 3.2% of outstanding Class A shares, or roughly 22% collectively. The founders will also each receive one share of Class F stock, which carries supervoting rights. Collectively, the group will control 51.1% of votes, with no single founder holding significantly more shares or votes than the others. Other major shareholders, including Amazon and Google, hold non-voting Class N shares.
The seven founders left OpenAI in 2021 to start Anthropic following reported disagreements with OpenAI’s leadership over how AI should be developed. Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who held senior research and policy roles at OpenAI, were joined by five colleagues. Anthropic has publicly stated since its founding that AI safety is a central focus of its work.
Source: TechCrunch