Former Google CEO Schmidt holds 1% stake in AI startup Anthropic
Eric Schmidt owns about 1 per cent of Anthropic, positioning him for major gains when the AI startup goes public, Bloomberg reported. The former Google CEO invested tens of millions in the Series A round. Anthropic’s IPO could value the company at around US$1.5 trillion.
Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt owns about 1 per cent of artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, positioning him for one of the largest individual windfalls when the company goes public, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.
Schmidt invested tens of millions of dollars in Anthropic’s Series A funding round, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. It was unclear whether he has sold any of his stake since. His representatives declined to comment, and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Anthropic’s planned initial public offering is expected to generate substantial returns for its early investors and employees. Some investors discussed a valuation of around US$1.5 trillion (HK$11.7 trillion) at an investor meeting, below earlier expectations of roughly US$2 trillion, Reuters reported last week.
In its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters in September, Anthropic laid out a vision that AI will transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialisation, electricity and the internet. Amazon and Google were among Anthropic’s early backers, investing billions of dollars and supplying the cloud computing capacity required to develop and run its Claude AI models.
Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011 and later as executive chairman of its parent company, Alphabet, before stepping down in January 2018.