Eric Schmidt Owns About 1% of Anthropic, Bloomberg

Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt owns around 1% of Anthropic thanks to an early investment in the AI company, Bloomberg reported on 19 October, citing people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg said the holding sets him up “for one of the largest individual windfalls from the company’s imminent public market debut”.

The report puts a name to one of the early investors who stand to gain from Anthropic’s planned listing. Schmidt has not confirmed the holding, and Anthropic has not commented on it.

In brief

Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar, that Eric Schmidt owns around 1% of Anthropic after investing in its Series A round.
It is unclear whether he has sold any part of the stake since, according to Bloomberg.
Anthropic’s IPO has not been priced, so the value of any stake is not yet known.

A Series A bet, according to Bloomberg

The stake dates back to Anthropic’s early fundraising. “Schmidt invested tens of millions of dollars in Anthropic’s Series A fundraising round, according to the people,” Bloomberg reported. The sources asked not to be identified because they were not authorised to discuss private matters, the outlet said.

There is an important caveat. “It’s unclear if he has sold any part of his stake since the initial investment,” Bloomberg wrote. That means the 1% figure describes what people familiar with the matter say he owns, not a holding confirmed in any filing seen by TSN.

Reuters followed up the story. In its write-up of Bloomberg’s report, Reuters said Schmidt owns “about 1 per cent of Anthropic”, positioning him for one of the largest individual windfalls when the company goes public. Schmidt’s representatives declined to comment, and Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

The valuation is still being discussed

Any windfall depends on where Anthropic’s shares are eventually priced, and that has not happened yet. According to Reuters, “Some investors discussed a valuation of around $1.5 trillion at an investor meeting, below earlier expectations of roughly $2 trillion.” Those are figures from investor discussions, not an offer price.

Reuters also noted that Amazon and Google were among Anthropic’s early backers, investing billions of dollars and supplying the cloud computing capacity the company needs to build and run its Claude models. Schmidt himself was Google’s chief executive from 2001 to 2011 and later executive chairman of its parent, Alphabet, before stepping down in January 2018, Reuters said.

The report comes as Anthropic’s listing, which Bloomberg calls imminent, draws closer. TSN has reported that Anthropic told investors its third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, that it has set up a Public Benefit Fund with 5% of its shares, and that OpenAI is reportedly racing to close a funding round before Anthropic’s IPO.

Our read

This is TSN’s analysis, not investment advice. Reports like this are a reminder that an IPO creates winners among early backers long before ordinary investors can buy in. Until Anthropic publishes a priced offering and its final ownership disclosures, the size of Schmidt’s holding, and whether he still has all of it, rest on Bloomberg’s sources.