Treat your ex a little better: Google's former CEO has received a "breakup fee" worth 20 billion US dollars.

In Silicon Valley, the criteria for measuring the success of a relationship are often different from those of ordinary people. This place is not only teeming with geeks who change the world, but also abounds in absurd and overnight multi-billion capital myths.

Recently, a highly cyberpunk, dark-humored gossip anecdote has been circulating in the tech circle: Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, once dated a woman, and the two eventually broke up. Later, this woman married Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic. It is reported that it was she who introduced her ex-boyfriend Schmidt to participate in Anthropic's early financing.

As Anthropic prepares for its IPO, the approximately 1% stake held by Schmidt has a book value of about 20 billion US dollars if calculated based on the previous upper limit of the target valuation of about 2 trillion US dollars. It should be noted that this valuation is a figure in IPO targets or market discussions, not a realized value; recently, some investors have revised down the reasonable valuation discussion to around 1.5 trillion US dollars.

Netizens jokingly summed it up: "Be nice to your ex."

Behind this joke lies the most profound and hidden power network and capital operation logic in Silicon Valley over the past decade. This 20 billion US dollars (on paper) is by no means just a derivative of an emotional gossip, but a wealth sample intertwined by the top-level "unconventional consensus cognition" and "social capital" in the AI era.

A 4,300-fold "breakup fee" and hidden social capital

Let's do the math first.

In 2021, Anthropic was just established. In its Series A financing at that time, Anthropic was valued at about 461 million US dollars (data from PitchBook). Schmidt invested tens of millions of US dollars through platforms such as his family office Hillspire, TomorrowVentures and Innovation Endeavors.

More than four years later, the discussed IPO target valuation range of Anthropic is roughly between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion US dollars. If calculated at the upper limit of 2 trillion US dollars, the company's valuation has increased by more than 4,300 times compared with that in the Series A round; Schmidt's roughly 1% stake corresponds to a value of about 20 billion US dollars. Even calculated based on the revised down valuation of about 1.5 trillion US dollars, the book value of this part of the shares is close to 150 billion US dollars.

In the history of venture capital, this is undoubtedly an extremely rare paper return. For reference, Innovation Endeavors invested in Uber in the early stage in 2011, and the valuation increased by about 1,400 times when Uber went public in 2019, which was already regarded as one of the most successful early investments in Silicon Valley. Schmidt's return multiple on Anthropic is several times that of the Uber deal on paper.

But in the top venture capital circle, getting access to high-quality deals is often more difficult than making money. Early AI projects are not short of capital, what they lack are people who can bring strategic resources and top-level endorsement. In the social map of Silicon Valley, that woman who spans old money and new money reportedly played the key role of a "super node". It was her introduction that allowed Schmidt to cut into Anthropic at a very early stage — of course, the specific weight of this kind of introduction cannot be accurately quantified by outsiders, but in Silicon Valley, the value of introductions based on private trust endorsement is indeed impossible to measure with conventional due diligence costs.

Why Anthropic? The "discount" and "premium" of trust

If you think Schmidt just signed the check purely "for the sake of his ex-girlfriend", you are underestimating this old hand in Silicon Valley. In the world of capital, emotion is just a stepping stone, what really makes people pay is the judgment of the pulse of the times.

At that time, Schmidt, although bearing the aura of former Google CEO, had stepped back behind the scenes for many years. The founding team of Anthropic was almost all core backbones from OpenAI (including the Amodei siblings). This group of people left to start their own business because they were dissatisfied with OpenAI's commercialization pace and safety route.

In Silicon Valley, it takes courage to write a check of tens of millions of US dollars to a newly established AI company that is still burning money and faces regulatory uncertainties. But Schmidt had access to information that others did not — according to reports from multiple media outlets, his ex-girlfriend, who later became Amodei's wife, was a key part of this access.

In the venture capital circle, this can be understood as "information arbitrage" and "trust discount". While ordinary VCs are still reading business plans and doing due diligence, Schmidt may have learned about Dario's technical background, team cohesion, and paranoia about the AI safety route through the most private conversations. This kind of trust based on personal relationships has, to a certain extent, bypassed the cold due diligence process.

At the same time, Schmidt's ten years at Google allowed him to witness the birth and evolution of the Transformer architecture firsthand. He is clearer than most people about how large a business landscape talents who master top large model technology can leverage in the future. His bet on Anthropic is essentially a bet on "a strong competitor to OpenAI" and "a more pure AI safety narrative".

Personal ties and top-level cognition converged here, and Schmidt acted decisively.

The folding of Silicon Valley: Interpersonal network is the real underlying code

The most thought-provoking part of this story is that it reveals a side of the power structure in Silicon Valley: top deals often do not take place entirely in public roadshow halls. Dining tables, cocktail parties, and personal introductions also constitute important transaction interfaces.

We are used to seeing the tech industry as a world that only values technical strength, code quality, and algorithm benchmark scores. But stripping off this coat, Silicon Valley is essentially still a "village" that highly relies on trust networks. Here, connections, alumni relations, and even emotional entanglements may become the invisible infrastructure for information flow.

Look at those nodes that change destinies: Schmidt accessed Dario at a very early stage through personal connections, and locked in a stake with a paper value of up to 20 billion US dollars with tens of millions of US dollars; and Dario's wife reportedly introduced early investors of Schmidt's caliber to the company in the early days of her husband's entrepreneurship.

In contrast, ordinary engineers who lost their jobs during the Silicon Valley layoff wave, or entrepreneurs who run around for small-scale financing, have far fewer opportunities to access such core circles. Code is egalitarian, but the network effect of capital and connections often only self-reinforces in the circles with the highest information density.

The miracle of personal investment, and the wealth creation frenzy in the AI era

Is this 20 billion US dollars (on paper) just the victory of Schmidt as an individual investor?

It is also a microcosm of the sharp rise in capital concentration in the AI era.

According to the information disclosed in the preliminary prospectus, Anthropic achieved revenue of 16.3 billion US dollars in the first half of 2026, a significant increase from 1.1 billion US dollars in the same period of last year; but the net loss in the same period was 80.7 billion US dollars, of which about 72 billion US dollars came from non-cash accounting adjustments related to financing instruments such as convertible notes. The company has committed to spending about 450 billion US dollars on cloud computing agreements in the next 7 to 10 years, and if the agreements still under negotiation are included, potential infrastructure spending may further rise.

If Schmidt's stake is eventually realized at a value close to 20 billion US dollars, it will significantly increase his personal wealth. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that Schmidt's current net worth is about 67.4 billion US dollars; if Anthropic goes public at a valuation of 2 trillion US dollars, his net worth may approach 800 billion US dollars; even calculated based on the valuation of the last financing round of about 965 billion US dollars, this stake can add nearly 10 billion US dollars to his wealth.

Conclusion: The ultimate bet on vision and connections

Back to that joke: "Be nice to your ex."

In this story, the end of a relationship is linked to a business investment in an extremely indirect and unreplicable way. This is not just a case study of interpersonal networks, but also a fable about maintaining an "information radar" in an era of great changes.

Schmidt's investment is a reward for his early vision and risk tolerance, and it is also inseparable from his ability to turn personal relationships into business opportunities.

For ordinary people, it is almost impossible to replicate Schmidt's wealth miracle, and you may not have a wife who can introduce your ex-boyfriend to a hundreds of billions unicorn. But the logic behind it still has reference value: in this world folded by algorithms and computing power, do not underestimate the most outstanding people around you, and do not underestimate the long-term value of trust. Those seemingly insignificant connections sometimes echo in unexpected ways in the future.

In the AI era, computing power is valuable, data is valuable, but the most expensive thing is still the person who can bring you to the table.

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