Anthropic IPO wealth creation: VCs rake in $10 billion each on average, FTX exits early and misses out on $100 billion returns

Beating AI News Flash: Anthropic plans to go public as early as mid-November. The market is discussing an IPO valuation of approximately $1.5 trillion, about 55% higher than the $965 billion financing valuation in May this year.

Based on this potential valuation, several investment institutions will each receive massive paper returns exceeding $10 billion:

1. Spark Capital: Invested $75 million in 2023, and its stake may now be worth approximately $10.9 billion. At that time, Anthropic's valuation was only about $5 billion. Spark also secured a board seat and is currently the only known venture capital firm with a director seat.

2. Sound Ventures: Initial investment of $35 million, followed by an additional $400 million. This firm, co-founded by Hollywood agent Guy Oseary and actor Ashton Kutcher, also entered in 2023, and its stake is now worth billions of dollars.

3. Menlo Ventures: Cumulative investment exceeding $1 billion, with a stake value of approximately $21.8 billion. This includes a $500 million Series D investment. When Menlo first entered in May 2023, Anthropic was still seen as a weak challenger to OpenAI with a small revenue scale.

4. Iconiq: Entered only in 2025, with cumulative investment exceeding $6 billion, and its stake may be worth approximately $26.4 billion. At the time of its first investment, Anthropic's valuation had already reached $183 billion. Even so, this investment still has paper gains of nearly $20 billion.

5. Sequoia Capital: Began investing only this year, with cumulative investment of approximately $3 billion, obtaining about 1% stake. Based on the latest valuation, the stake is worth approximately $15 billion. Sequoia had previously invested in OpenAI and xAI, and for a time did not participate in Anthropic, but ultimately entered.

6. Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC: First invested in 2025, with cumulative investment exceeding $4.5 billion. It now also holds about 1% stake, valued at approximately $15 billion based on the latest valuation.

7. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Invested tens of millions of dollars as early as 2021. He now holds about 1% stake, worth approximately $15 billion, making him one of the individual investors with the greatest potential gains.

8. FTX: Invested $500 million in 2021, initially holding a 13.56% stake, which was diluted to 7.84% by 2024. Subsequently, all shares were sold off during bankruptcy liquidation, ultimately recovering approximately $1.3 billion, for an actual gain of $800 million. Had the stake been held throughout, based on the 7.84% proportion from that year and today's potential $1.5 trillion IPO valuation, the shares would theoretically be worth about $117.6 billion—$116.3 billion more than the actual sale price. However, this calculation does not account for equity dilution from subsequent financing rounds, so the actual value would be lower.

FTX's shares did not vanish into thin air either. In 2024, FTX sold off all Anthropic shares in batches during bankruptcy liquidation. The first batch, worth about $884 million, involved 24 buyers: Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala's affiliated company ATIC bought approximately $500 million, Jane Street bought $100 million, and a Fidelity fund bought $45 million.

Additionally, Lightspeed holds less than a 2% stake. Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, as well as Founders Fund, Coatue, Altimeter and other institutions have also invested in Anthropic, but there is currently insufficient complete public holdings data to accurately calculate returns on a per-institution basis.