Gone are the days of boring, old, billion-dollar valuations. We’re now talking trillions, baby.
First, let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane.
When I was writing FORTUNE’s Term Sheet newsletter back in 2018, I called Tencent Music’s planned public offering an “eye-popping IPO” because the Chinese streaming giant was reportedly seeking a valuation of more than $25 billion. (hahahahaha)
If you had told me in 2018 that eight years later, we would see a company seeking a $1.3 trillion valuation in the public markets, I would’ve spit out my coffee. But here we are.
Anthropic’s proposed IPO will sell 825 million shares to the public at a range of $70 to $78 apiece. But here’s what’s interesting: a single share the public can’t buy will carry 50.1% of the vote on matters submitted to shareholders generally. That share will belong to an LLC whose members are all seven of the company’s co-founders.
Dario Amodei is the CEO who runs the company. His sister, Daniela, is Anthropic’s president and board chair. And then the seven co-founders — including Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Chris Olah — will share the controlling shareholder vote.
And that’s not all.
A separate trust generally gets to select a majority of the authorized board. And seven technology companies have agreed to buy $26 billion of stock that comes without ordinary voting rights.
That means that the people putting up the money aren’t necessarily the people calling the shots.
So who actually holds the power at Anthropic? Let’s break it down.