Anthropic’s seven cofounders have pledged to give away 80% of their personal stakes in the AI company—a promise that could amount to nearly $80 billion.
CEO Dario Amodei outlined the pledge in a January essay warning about AI’s risks, arguing that people becoming wealthy from the technology have a responsibility to address its economic consequences.
The Claude maker reaffirmed the commitment in its IPO filing, which was made public Monday morning, stating that its cofounders “have each pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal equity in Anthropic to philanthropic causes.”
The seven founders—Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Chris Olah—collectively hold roughly 1.69 billion shares.
Using the share counts and latest private funding-round price analyzed by Fortune, the founders’ combined holdings would be worth approximately $99.3 billion. Eighty percent comes to about $79.4 billion, or roughly $11 billion per founder on average.
The S-1 leaves the offering price and the number of shares each founder will sell blank, so their remaining stakes cannot yet be definitively valued.
Behind those fortunes is a rapidly growing business: Anthropic generated $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to the S-1.
Anthropic could raise as much as $100 billion in the IPO. The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT,” with a debut expected around Thanksgiving that could value it at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.
Where would the money go?
The filing describes the pledges as voluntary and revocable, rather than legally binding, with the timing and recipients of donations still uncertain. The founders could fulfill their promises through charities, private foundations, donor-advised funds, or other philanthropic vehicles.
Giving away most of their stakes would not necessarily mean giving up their say in the company. Under the planned governance structure, the seven founders would collectively hold 50.1% of the voting power on matters put to shareholders generally through a special share held by their Founder LLC.
A cofounder stays in that LLC as long as they keep at least 2% of the Class A shares they held at the IPO, meaning they could give away 98% of their stake and still help decide how the controlling share votes. A separate Long-Term Benefit Trust, however, would have the authority to appoint a majority of the board.
Those personal promises are separate from Anthropic’s Public Benefit Fund, whose shares would be worth approximately $50 billion at the same private-funding benchmark. Anthropic says the Public Benefit Fund could support nonprofits or distribute money directly to specific populations, including efforts to address AI’s impact on workers.
For Amodei, the concern is what happens if AI’s financial rewards become concentrated among too few people.
“The thing to worry about is a level of wealth concentration that will break society,” he wrote in his January essay.
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