Insiders, a competitor, a philanthropist, and an activist: Who owns shares in Anthropic?

Anthropic’s founders are among the company’s largest private shareholders, according to the IPO prospectus released on October 26. The seven founders, including CEO Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela, each hold stakes ranging from 230 million to 245 million shares. Forbes estimates each of their net worths at more than $15 billion.

The disclosure lists several other individual investors who are insiders. In addition, Anthropic has, at various times, disclosed other private investors who provided funding to the company in its early stages. Who has invested in the startup that is set to conduct a record-breaking initial public offering?

One of Anthropic’s first investors was former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The billionaire, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $36.3 billion, has focused on investing in startups—primarily those related to artificial intelligence, space technology, and scientific research—since leaving the tech giant. Among others, Schmidt has funded the ride-hailing and delivery service Uber, the French language model developer Mistral AI, and World Labs, a developer of AI models for 3D environments.

According to Bloomberg, in 2021 Schmidt invested tens of millions of dollars in Anthropic as part of a $124 million Series A funding round. At the time, the company was primarily engaged in research on AI safety and reliability and was valued at $461 million. Based on the upper end of the $1.8–2 trillion valuation range that Anthropic had recently claimed, the startup’s value has increased 4,300-fold.

In 2018, Kemi Clark—his ex-girlfriend, who later became Amodei’s wife—introduced him to Schmidt, the founder of Anthropic. “I believed in Dario Amodei. He is an outstanding scientist and promised to bring together a team of equally talented researchers. In four years, Amodei transformed the startup—which started with a dozen or so people gathering in Presita Park in San Francisco during the pandemic—into a global industry leader,” Schmidt wrote on LinkedIn.

As of October 2026, Schmidt owns about 1% of Anthropic, according to Bloomberg. It is difficult to calculate the exact return on his investment: it is unknown whether Schmidt adjusted the size of his stake after the first round of funding. Neither Schmidt himself nor Anthropic representatives have commented on the size of his current stake.

In 2021, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn became the lead investor in Anthropic’s first funding round of $124 million (in which Schmidt also participated). A year later, the investor participated in the next round, which raised $580 million. The exact size of his stake is not currently disclosed.

For more than 10 years, Tallinn has been warning that losing control over artificial intelligence could threaten the survival of humanity, and it has been funding research centers focused on this issue. He viewed the purchase of a stake in Anthropic as a way to gain leverage over the developers. In an interview with Semafor, Tallinn explained that, as a major shareholder, he wanted to slow down the pace of the race from within the company: “My philosophy was to drive out money that didn’t care.” However, Tallinn was unable to influence the project’s development. In 2023, he acknowledged that the plan had failed: he was disappointed that Anthropic and other AI labs did not support the call for a six-month pause in the development of new AI models.

Tallinn plans to use the proceeds from investments in AI companies to support nonprofit organizations focused on AI safety. According to the WSJ, its analysts are currently exploring how to utilize the expected multibillion-dollar proceeds from Anthropic’s IPO.

Moskowitz, who was Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate at Harvard and helped him launch Facebook, also invested in Anthropic during its first funding round in 2021. By that point, Moskovitz and his wife, Carey Tuna, had already been funding projects in the field of technology security for several years: in 2017, their charitable foundation contributed $30 million to OpenAI, which was still a nonprofit at the time. According to Tuna, in the case of Anthropic, they were also supporting science: the couple invested in the project “before it became clear that these labs would make money.”

In 2025, the couple transferred their stake in Anthropic to a nonprofit organization. At the time, Forbes estimated the value of their stake at approximately $500 million. Tuna explained this move by citing a conflict of interest: the couple’s organizations fund research on AI risks and industry regulations, which was incompatible with their status as shareholders in a commercial developer. All proceeds from the IPO, she said, will go to charity.

Demis Hassabis, founder of a rival organization—Google’s AI division DeepMind—and a Nobel Prize laureate, invested in the startup as early as the first funding round, but this fact only came to light this year through an article in the Financial Times. Neither Anthropic nor Hassabis himself has commented on their ties.

Hassabis founded DeepMind in 2010 (Google acquired the company in 2014) and led the development of the Gemini family of models—the main competitor to Anthropic’s Claude. Anthropic isn’t the only third-party AI project in Hassabis’s portfolio. As a business angel, he has backed the startups Inflection AI and Ineffable Intelligence, founded by fellow DeepMind alumni Mustafa Suleyman and David Silver.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $4.1 billion, joined Anthropic’s board of directors in 2025. His role is that of lead independent director: he chairs meetings and facilitates communication between the board chair and the independent directors.

According to the IPO prospectus, Hastings is entitled to receive 9,410 Class A shares for his work. The shares will vest within two months after September 30, 2026, provided he remains on the board of directors. Based on the share price in Anthropic’s most recent private transaction ($58.90 per share), Hastings’ stake is valued at approximately $554,000.

Christopher Liddell, who joined Anthropic's board of directors earlier this year, has the same compensation package and terms as Hastings.

Liddell previously served as chief financial officer at General Motors and prepared the automaker for its initial public offering. GM's 2010 initial public offering was the largest in U.S. history. This experience was a key factor in Liddell's recruitment to Anthropic, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The prospectus lists 176,050 Class A shares held by Vasa Narasimhan, CEO of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis; their estimated value is approximately $10.4 million.

The majority of these securities—169,770 shares— are owned by Bodhi LLC, where Narasimhan has sole control over investments and voting rights. The offering documents do not specify when, at what price, or under what terms the company acquired this stake. Narasimhan will receive an additional 6,280 shares for serving on the board of directors for two months following September 30, 2026, provided he does not resign.

The CEO of Novartis joined Anthropic’s board of directors in April. He was invited to join the board by the Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent trust that oversees the startup’s adherence to its mission regarding technology safety. The company explained that Narasimhan was chosen for his experience working in a highly regulated industry. Throughout his career in the pharmaceutical industry, Narasimhan has led the development and market launch of more than 35 new drugs, and Anthropic hopes to apply this experience in the safe implementation of complex developments to its own AI models.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, led a $580 million Series B funding round for Anthropic in 2022. He invested $500 million in the startup, acquiring a 13.56% stake. Two of his closest associates also participated in the same round: Caroline Ellison, head of Alameda Research, invested $10 million, and Nishad Singh, head of FTX’s engineering division, invested $40 million.

After the collapse of FTX, it came to light that Anthropic had been using the exchange’s clients’ money. The investigation proved that Bankman-Fried had diverted user funds through Alameda Research into venture capital investments, real estate, and donations. The exchange’s founder was found guilty of $8 billion in fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Allison and Singh received lighter sentences for cooperating with the investigation and testifying against Bankman-Fried.

All three lost their Anthropic shares: in 2024, FTX’s bankruptcy trustees sold the shares for approximately $1.3 billion to pay off creditors. Allison’s and Singh’s shares were confiscated by the government. In 2025, the shares were sold for $627 million: Anthropic itself purchased the stake and then resold it to other investors. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the proceeds were used to compensate victims.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor