Which investors will get rich from Anthropic's IPO?

As AI companies Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for their public listings, a question has drawn widespread attention inside and outside Silicon Valley: which investors will walk away with huge windfalls?

As it turns out, the answer is almost — everyone.

According to statistics from PitchBook, which tracks private equity investments, at least 95 investors have invested in both Anthropic and OpenAI. HSG, the well-known venture capital firm, has stakes in both startups. The same goes for Founders Fund, Coatue Management and Altimeter Capital Management.

This is highly unusual. In the past, venture capital firms that invested in early-stage startups usually only backed one company in a fast-growing new technology category. Investing in direct competitors was considered a conflict of interest.

But the AI boom has changed almost everything in Silicon Valley, not least the way investors nurture startups. Top firms on Sand Hill Road — the famous street in Menlo Park, California, that remains the core hub of venture capital firms — have shifted norms and adjusted their strategies to avoid missing out on investing in AI companies that could become the next $2 trillion market cap winners.

Karan Mehandru, an investor at Madrona Venture Group, said few large investment funds are willing to admit that "we missed out on both OpenAI and Anthropic".

The sheer volume of capital raised by these two private companies shows how large a share of Silicon Valley's interests are tied to the success or failure of Anthropic and OpenAI.

According to PitchBook data, Anthropic has raised more than $130 billion from around 300 investors, including venture capital firms, hedge funds, large tech companies and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. OpenAI has raised more than $180 billion from roughly 230 investors, including large tech companies and Joshua Kushner's investment firm Thrive Capital.

By comparison, Facebook (before it rebranded to Meta) raised only $2.4 billion ahead of its 2012 IPO, while Uber raised roughly $20 billion before its 2019 public listing.

Not all investors listed by PitchBook as shareholders of Anthropic and OpenAI obtained their stakes through traditional venture financing rounds; the list includes a number of investors who bought indirectly through private equity sales on the "secondary market", acquiring shares from existing shareholders such as employees or early backers.

SpaceX's successful $1.7 trillion valuation IPO in June has further fueled investors' enthusiasm for Anthropic and OpenAI. Anthropic is on track to go public this year with a potential valuation of $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO in history. OpenAI is likely to list next year, with its offering scale also expected to be extremely large.

For investors, this means "all the numbers are bigger, including entry price and exit price", said Sohail Prasad, CEO of Destiny100, which has purchased stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic on the secondary market.

For years, venture capitalists followed similar rules. The idea was to hold a large stake in young companies and provide advisory support. Investors would take a seat on the board of directors of the startups.

When Facebook went public, venture capital firm Accel Partners held a 11.4% stake in the company. Its partner Jim Breyer served on Facebook's board alongside two other venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.

When Uber went public, venture capital firm Benchmark Capital Partners held an 11% stake in the company. Benchmark's investor Matt Cohler served as a board member.

But Anthropic, founded five years ago, looks very different. Part of the reason is that venture capital firms initially saw the company as little more than a "science project". Anjney Midha, an investor in Anthropic, said recently on a podcast that more than 20 firms turned down the startup's funding pitch. Instead, people from the "effective altruism" circle — a philanthropic movement that prioritizes using data and analysis to solve social problems — were the first to invest in Anthropic.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Spark Capital eventually led a funding round for Anthropic in 2023. Yasmin Razavi, an investor at Spark Capital, joined Anthropic's board of directors.

Around that time, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and executive Neerav Kingsland visited the home of Hollywood talent manager Guy Oseary, who invests in tech through his firm Sound Ventures. A person familiar with the matter said Oseary was deeply impressed by Anthropic's pitch. But Sound Ventures had already invested in OpenAI.

As a result, the firm obtained permission from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Dr. Amodei to invest in both companies, according to the person familiar with the matter. This made Sound Ventures one of the first firms to back both of the rivals.

Shortly afterwards, Oseary raised a new fund dedicated to investing in artificial intelligence. "We believe this will be the most important technology of our lifetimes," he said in a statement.

As Anthropic and OpenAI grew, their capital needs outstripped the support capacity of many venture capital firms, which could not write checks large enough. Menlo Ventures, the Silicon Valley firm known for its investment in Uber, devised a workaround. To further invest in Anthropic, the firm created a "special purpose vehicle" in 2024, a fund that pooled numerous small investors into a $750 million entity controlled by Menlo.

Thrive Capital also created a similar vehicle in 2024 to invest in OpenAI.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia also hold stakes in both Anthropic and OpenAI, and have signed large contracts to provide cloud computing services or chips to them. Some of these giants have now become the largest shareholders of these startups.

Two large Silicon Valley investment firms, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital, later led funding rounds for Anthropic. According to three people familiar with the matter, Menlo, Lightspeed and Iconiq each currently hold a 1% to 2% stake in Anthropic. This financial support puts them among the largest external investors in the AI startup. (Menlo and Lightspeed do not hold stakes in OpenAI; Iconiq holds a small stake in OpenAI.)

Venture capital firms typically aim to hold more than 1% or 2% of a startup, but Anthropic's potential $2 trillion valuation at IPO means investors will still reap huge returns. Razavi from Spark Capital is the only investor with a seat on Anthropic's board.

After Anthropic's coding and business automation tools achieved success last year, investing in the company became a "consensus" — a term venture capitalists use to refer to a success that the entire industry widely recognizes. Despite the lack of detailed information on the company's performance or board seats, global investors are scrambling to buy its shares.

HSG previously turned down the chance to invest in Anthropic, in part because it backed Elon Musk's rival xAI and was also a significant investor in OpenAI, according to a person familiar with the firm. But this year, HSG participated in two funding rounds for Anthropic, including co-leading a round in May when the company was valued at $900 billion.

Other investment firms obtained stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI when the AI companies acquired smaller firms via stock deals. According to PitchBook data, Anthropic has acquired at least four companies, while OpenAI has bought roughly a dozen.

Last year, San Francisco-based OpenAI acquired AI software provider Statsig for $1.1 billion, which gave Madrona a stake in OpenAI. Madrona owned part of Statsig, meaning its stake was converted into shares of OpenAI.

Mehandru said Statsig performed well, but his firm was happy to trade those shares for a stake in OpenAI. "If it had been stock in any other company," he said, "the answer might have been different."

In February this year, when Anthropic acquired Vercept — a company that builds agents capable of remotely operating computers — Madrona also obtained a stake in Anthropic. Madrona was previously an investor in Vercept.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Business", written by Erin, and published with authorization from 36Kr.