The Sydney Morning Herald logo
The Sydney Morning Herald logo
Advertisement

This brother and sister helped start a company five years ago. Now they are worth $11 billion each

Biz Carson and Tom Maloney

Updated ,first published

Anthropic’s latest funding round has vaulted the AI firm’s seven founders into the ranks of the world’s 500 richest people, the most from one company to be added in a single day in Bloomberg Billionaires Index history.

Led by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, the founders each own less than 1 per cent of the company, according to wealth index calculations, but their individual stakes are worth about $US8 billion ($11.2 billion) after Anthropic raised $US65 billion at a $US965 billion valuation.

Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei co-founded Anthropic five years ago.Bloomberg

Along with the Amodeis, other Anthropic co-founders joining Bloomberg’s wealth list for the first time are Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Christopher Olah.

Overnight, it was revealed the company has confidentially submitted draft paperwork for a public listing, potentially leapfrogging longtime rival OpenAI in the race toward a Wall Street debut as soon as this fall.

Advertisement

“The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set,” the company said in a blog post.

Anthropic, once viewed as an underdog to OpenAI, has vaulted ahead of the ChatGPT maker in recent months on multiple fronts, with its value eclipsing OpenAI’s value for the first time after the funding round. Anthropic’s advances in coding and cybersecurity capabilities have rattled markets and also enticed new business customers.

With the filing on Monday, Anthropic is poised to potentially beat OpenAI to the public market, setting itself up to attract more attention and capital from a greater pool of investors. OpenAI itself was said to be preparing its own confidential filing for an initial public offering in the coming weeks and was targeting a public debut sometime in the fall,

The artificial intelligence boom has created an explosion of wealth both in public and private markets over the past few years. Jensen Huang, co-founder of AI chipmaker Nvidia, has seen his fortune rise to more than $US177 billion from $US10.9 billion in October 2022, making him the eighth-richest person on the wealth index.

Advertisement

Bloomberg this month identified 19 new AI billionaires — collectively worth $US59 billion — to emerge from the latest round of buzzy startups, ranging from the founders of Cerebras Systems, which went public earlier this month, to Surge Lab’s Edwin Chen, who’s now worth $US13 billion.

With the filing on Monday, Anthropic is poised to potentially beat OpenAI to the public market, setting itself up to attract more attention and capital from a greater pool of investors.AP

San Francisco-based Anthropic was started in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees who left following disagreements over the company’s future direction. Known for its chatbot Claude and tools for businesses, Anthropic expects to post $US10.9 billion in revenue for the second quarter, more than doubling from the prior three-month period, Bloomberg previously reported.

Bloomberg’s calculations of the co-founders’ stakes rely on Pitchbook data and reporting about Anthropic’s previous funding rounds, and are adjusted to account for typical equity grants to non-founding employees based on data from Carta.

Advertisement

While much of their net worth is still on paper, Anthropic’s founders have pledged to give away 80 per cent of their fortunes. CEO Dario Amodei has said he worries about the concentration of wealth that could come out of the AI industry, especially its potential effect on everything from tax policy to democracy and political influence.

“The thing to worry about is a level of wealth concentration that will break society,” he wrote in a January 2026 essay.

“Those who are at the forefront of AI’s economic boom should be willing to give away both their wealth and their power.”

Bloomberg

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.

From our partners

Advertisement
Advertisement