Former Google CEO Schmidt owns 1% stake in Anthropic, Bloomberg reports

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt reportedly holds a 1% stake in Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence startup, which could yield a significant financial return upon the company's planned initial public offering (IPO), according to a Bloomberg News report.

Schmidt, who served as Google's CEO from 2001 to 2011 and as executive chairman of Alphabet, the parent company, invested tens of millions of dollars in Anthropic during its Series A funding round. The extent of his current holdings remains unknown, as it is unclear whether he has sold any of his stake since the initial investment.

Anthropic's IPO is anticipated to generate substantial profits for its early investors and employees. During an investor meeting last week, a valuation of approximately $1.5 trillion was discussed, which was lower than the earlier expectation of around $2 trillion.

In its IPO prospectus, Anthropic outlined a vision where artificial intelligence will revolutionize the global economy to a greater extent than industrialization, electricity, and the internet. Major tech companies, including Amazon and Google, were among Anthropic's early backers, providing billions of dollars in funding and cloud computing resources to develop and operate its AI models, notably the Claude series.