Eric Schmidt's Early Anthropic Bet Set to Yield $20 Billion IPO Windfall

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt stands to make a massive personal gain from his early investment in Anthropic, with his roughly 1% stake potentially worth $20 billion when the AI startup goes public. Bloomberg reported on October 19 that Schmidt invested tens of millions during Anthropic's Series A fundraising in May 2021, when the company was valued at approximately $461 million. At the target IPO valuation of $2 trillion—which would make it the largest public offering on record—his holdings could appreciate roughly 4,300 times from the initial investment.