Amazon poised to reap largest gains from Anthropic's upcoming IPO

Anthropic's registration statement shows that venture-capital firms such as Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, Sound Ventures and Spark Capital will see multi-billion-dollar returns when the company lists, although none of them own enough shares to appear among the principal stockholders. The company’s private valuation of about $965 billion means a 1 % stake is worth roughly $10 billion, so Menlo's estimated $14 billion position represents only about 1.5 % of the firm.

Amazon, which first committed up to $4 billion to Anthropic in 2023, has since provided additional financing through convertible notes and preferred stock. The S-1 indicates that Amazon holds convertible notes with $6.2 billion of principal outstanding, representing Anthropic’s entire debt load, and values those notes at $97.9 billion. The notes could convert into as many as 1.84 billion shares, subject to a 12 % cap on the partially diluted share count, a limit Amazon may waive.

In the second quarter, Amazon invested $10 billion in non-voting preferred stock, adding to $8 billion invested in convertible notes between 2023 and 2025, for a total investment of roughly $18 billion. The company also secured a commitment from Anthropic to spend at least $110 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next decade.

Google holds a smaller stake, estimated at about 5.6 % after dilution, and has secured cloud-service commitments valued at $114 billion through 2033. While venture investors are set to receive substantial payouts, the filing suggests that the primary financial beneficiaries of the IPO will be the strategic cloud partners that have funded Anthropic's growth.

"The S-1 notes that some cloud providers also develop competing AI models and may not always share Anthropic's objectives," the filing states.