Eric Schmidt’s path to a $20 billion Anthropic windfall began with an introduction from his ex, Cami Clark—now Dario Amodei’s wife

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's early investment in AI company Anthropic could soon be worth billions as the company prepares to go public. Schmidt, who dated Cami Clark from 2011 to 2014, was introduced to Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei through Clark. Schmidt invested in Anthropic's $124 million Series A funding round in 2021, and his stake in the company could now be worth $20 billion if Anthropic goes public at its $2 trillion target.

Anthropic's valuation has increased dramatically since Schmidt's investment, going from $461 million to $965 billion. The AI company reported $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of the year, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier, but also reported an $80.7 billion loss, primarily due to an accounting charge tied to convertible debt and financing instruments.

Anthropic has signed $450 billion in mostly "noncancellable" cloud computing deals over the next decade, but it needs annual profits of $59 billion to $79 billion to justify a $2 trillion IPO valuation.