Anthropic's IPO: the founders sell about 1.4% of their shares and keep the votes

Each of Anthropic’s seven co-founders plans to sell 3,378,378 Class A shares in the company’s IPO, about $250 million each at the $74 midpoint of the $70 to $78 price range. That is roughly 1.4% of the shares each of them holds, by our calculation from the filing’s ownership table. A single Class F share, held by a Founder LLC whose members are the seven co-founders, carries a fixed 50.1% of the votes on matters put to stockholders generally. The filing says that, on completion of the offering, the co-founders will collectively hold approximately 61.3% of voting power including that share, or approximately 11.2% excluding it, based on beneficial ownership as of 30 September 2026.

The figures come from Anthropic’s second amended S-1, filed with the SEC on 10 November. The price is not final. Anthropic has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker “ANT”. CNBC, as reported by TechCrunch, expects trading to start around 19 November 2026.

The headline number is the small one

“Cash out” is how most coverage has framed it. But the filing’s ownership table puts the $250 million in proportion. Before the offering, each founder is listed as the beneficial owner of between about 240.6 million shares (Dario Amodei) and 244.2 million (Tom Brown). Selling 3,378,378 of them is about 1.4% of each holding.

The founders are also the only selling stockholders. Of the 825 million shares on offer, Anthropic itself is selling 801,351,354 and the seven founders are selling 23,648,646 between them, under 3% of the deal by our calculation (23,648,646 of 825 million). At $74, the founders’ combined slice comes to about $1.75 billion, the figure in Bloomberg Law’s headline. The company’s own share sale, at the same price, is worth $59.3 billion, before underwriting discounts.

Our view: this is a founders’ sale that looks like diversification, not an exit. At $74, the shares each founder still holds after the IPO would be worth roughly $17.6 billion to $17.8 billion on paper. That is our arithmetic on the filing’s figures, not a valuation, and it ignores the cost of exercising any options included in the totals.

The seven, named together in the filing, are Dario Amodei, chief executive; Daniela Amodei, president and chair; Tom Brown, chief compute officer; Jack Clark, who leads the Anthropic Institute; Jared Kaplan, chief science officer; Sam McCandlish, chief architect; and Christopher Olah, interpretability research lead. All left OpenAI to start Anthropic in 2021. We tell that story in our file on the Amodei siblings.

How they keep control

Immediately prior to the completion of the offering, Anthropic will issue one share of Class F stock to a Founder LLC whose only members, at first, are the seven co-founders. That share carries a fixed 50.1% of the voting power on matters put to stockholders generally, and is voted the way the continuing founders decide, with one vote each, so no single founder controls it. A separate Class T share is held by Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust, which elects a majority of the board. Class A buyers get one vote per share, but their combined voting power is capped at 49.9%. Amazon, Google and other strategic investors hold Class N shares, which have no vote.

On completion of the offering, based on beneficial ownership as of 30 September 2026, the filing says the co-founders will collectively hold approximately 61.3% of total voting power including that Class F share, and approximately 11.2% excluding it. Each co-founder votes their remaining Class A shares in their discretion. The filing says Anthropic will be a “controlled company” under Nasdaq rules.

One discrepancy to flag. TechCrunch’s founders story says the group will control 51.1% of the votes and that each founder gets a Class F share. The filing says there is one Class F share, with a fixed 50.1%, held through the Founder LLC, and gives the co-founders’ collective voting power as set out above. We have gone with the filing.

What happens to the money

The filing says each co-founder has pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal equity in Anthropic to philanthropic causes. It describes these pledges as “voluntary, revocable expressions of each co-founder’s philanthropic intent” that “do not constitute legally binding obligations.” They may be met over time through donor-advised funds, charitable organisations, private foundations or other vehicles. The filing does not tie the IPO sale itself to that pledge.

Footnotes (5) and (6) of the filing’s ownership table say a donor-advised fund established by Reed Hastings, and for which he provides investment recommendations, has indicated interest in buying up to $300 million of shares, and that Christopher Liddell and his spouse have indicated interest in buying up to $3 million through a trust. Hastings expressly disclaims beneficial ownership of any shares the fund may buy. Indications of interest are not binding. TechCrunch reported the same split.

The offering in brief

Anthropic is offering 825 million Class A shares at $70 to $78. TechCrunch calculates that would raise $57.75 billion to $64.35 billion, including the founders’ secondary shares. The filing does not state an implied valuation. TechCrunch puts a fully diluted value of $1.404 trillion at $78; that figure is not in the filing, and we could not reproduce it from the filing’s share counts. After the offering and the concurrent private placement, 13,086,672,593 shares of all classes would be outstanding: about $1.02 trillion at $78, or about $1.24 trillion including options and unvested RSUs the filing lists as excluded from that count. Neither figure is final. TechCrunch also reports that up to 20% of the offering is expected to go to retail investors.

Separately, it has agreed to sell $26 billion of non-voting Class N shares at the IPO price to AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC, with Google and Nvidia putting in $10 billion each. The filing’s “Run-Rate Revenue” operating metric was about $81 billion as of 31 October, up $10 billion from 30 September. That metric annualises the previous 28 days of consumption fees (times 13) plus monthly subscription fees (times 12); it is not GAAP revenue. Revenue for the three months ended 30 September 2026 was $17.0 billion.

FAQ

How much will each Anthropic founder make from the IPO? About $236 million at $70, $250 million at $74 and $264 million at $78, from 3,378,378 shares, before fees and tax. The final price is not set.

Do Anthropic’s founders keep control after the IPO? Yes. A Founder LLC owned by the seven co-founders holds a single Class F share with a fixed 50.1% of stockholder voting power, and a trust elects a board majority. Including the co-founders’ remaining Class A shares, the filing puts their collective voting power at approximately 61.3% on completion of the offering, or approximately 11.2% excluding the Class F share, based on beneficial ownership as of 30 September 2026.

When does Anthropic start trading? Anthropic has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker “ANT”. CNBC, as reported by TechCrunch, expects trading to start around 19 November 2026.

What is Anthropic valued at in the IPO? The filing does not state a valuation, and the price is not set. At $78, 13,086,672,593 shares outstanding after the offering and placement imply about $1.02 trillion, or about $1.24 trillion including options and unvested RSUs. TechCrunch’s $1.404 trillion fully diluted figure is not in the filing, and we could not reproduce it.