Anthropic’s founders’ 80% giving pledge could be worth nearly $80 billion

Anthropic’s seven cofounders have each pledged to give away 80% of their personal equity in the company. Based on Fortune’s read of their share counts and the latest private funding-round price, that promise is worth about $79.4 billion in total, or roughly $11 billion each on average.

CEO Dario Amodei first set out the idea in a January essay about AI risk, arguing that people who get rich from the technology should help deal with its economic fallout. Anthropic repeated the commitment in its IPO filing on Monday, saying the founders’ pledges are for philanthropic causes. The seven named founders are Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Chris Olah.

The company’s filing leaves some big numbers blank for now. It doesn’t yet say the offering price or how many shares each founder will sell, so the remaining value of their stakes can’t be pinned down. What is clear is that the business is growing fast: Anthropic reported $16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier.

And the IPO itself could be enormous. Anthropic said it could raise as much as $100 billion, plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, and expects a debut around Thanksgiving that could value it at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. But the money trail is more complicated than a simple charity story. The pledges are voluntary and revocable, and the founders can use charities, private foundations, donor-advised funds or other vehicles.

They may also give away a lot without giving up their grip on the company. Under the planned structure, the seven founders would hold 50.1% of the voting power through a special share held by their Founder LLC. A cofounder can stay in that LLC as long as they keep at least 2% of the Class A shares they held at the IPO, so someone could part with 98% of a stake and still help steer the vote. Separate from that, Anthropic’s Public Benefit Fund would hold shares worth about $50 billion at the same benchmark and could support nonprofits or direct aid, including efforts tied to AI’s effect on workers.