According to sources familiar with the matter, artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is offering certain current and former employees an opportunity to sell their company shares in a transaction that values the firm at approximately $3.5 trillion. This initiative allows employees to liquidate their holdings at a valuation close to that of the company's most recent funding round of $300 billion. The sources indicated that Anthropic has arranged between $5 billion and $6 billion for this share sale, though the final amount will depend on the quantity of shares eligible employees choose to sell.
Anthropic's latest funding round, which closed earlier this month, resulted in a post-money valuation of $3.8 billion after accounting for the cash invested. The company has declined to comment on this new share sale plan. The transaction will involve external investors, not Anthropic itself, purchasing these internal shares. One source mentioned that the offer is available to current and former employees who have worked at the company for at least 12 months.
Secondary share sales are becoming an increasingly common practice for startups, enabling employees to benefit from the company's valuation growth even without an acquisition or an initial public offering (IPO). This strategy has become crucial in the fiercely competitive AI talent market, especially as more large startups opt to remain private for longer periods. Other companies like Stripe Inc. and SpaceX also permit employee stock sales. Anthropic's primary competitor, OpenAI, regularly conducts share sales, including a secondary transaction last year valued at $6.6 billion that pegged the company's worth at $500 billion.
It is noteworthy that Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX have recently taken steps that could pave the way for potential future IPOs. In recent days, Anthropic released another tool perceived by the market as "disruptive," further heightening investor concerns about traditional software business models. This announcement contributed to a significant drop in IBM Corp's stock price on Monday. Anthropic unveiled an update to its Claude AI, introducing a new feature designed to substantially reduce the costs associated with maintaining and analyzing COBOL systems. COBOL, while not widely known among the general public, has been extensively used for decades in critical systems within banking, aviation, and government sectors, forming a significant part of IBM's enterprise services business.
Recently, on the cusp of an exponential explosion in AI technology, Anthropic's leader Dario Amodei made a striking prediction: AI is in the "twilight of exponential growth." He suggested that by 2026, humanity could witness the emergence of a "genius nation in data centers" composed of tens of thousands of top-tier AI minds. Amodei also stated that Anthropic's company revenue is currently growing at an extremely rapid pace, increasing tenfold.