If Anthropic goes public, many investors could potentially make big profits. Billions of dollars in profits are expected from the stake held by companies such as Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, Sound Ventures and Spark Capital.
However, according to Anthropic’s S-1, none of these VC firms own 5%, the threshold to be included in the list of major shareholders. That’s very unusual. In a typical technology IPO, lead venture investors hold a double-digit stake in the startup they backed. The reason is Anthropic’s size. At the company’s private valuation of $965 billion, a 1% stake is worth nearly $10 billion, so Menlo’s roughly $14 billion position, for example, is only about 1.5% of the company, according to figures recently reported by Bloomberg.
While venture companies may lack a significant percentage of equity, Anthropic has sold significant stakes to strategic partners, companies that are also business partners. In fact, Amazon will likely be the biggest financial beneficiary of this IPO.
Amazon first backed Anthropic in 2023, pledging to invest up to $4 billion in the AI company. Since then, Amazon has poured billions more into Anthropic. Instead of paying for equity upfront, Amazon structured the bulk of its investment as convertible debt, a type of debt that converts into equity upon an IPO or sale.
As of June 30, Amazon held convertible notes with a principal balance of $6.2 billion, according to the S-1. This is Anthropic’s total debt. But as Anthropic’s valuation soared in successive funding rounds, the stock those notes converted into was worth much more. According to Amazon’s own filings, its banknote holdings were valued at $97.9 billion as of June 30.
As the value of Amazon’s convertible debt skyrocketed, Anthropic needed to record the increasing value of the debt on its books. The company reported the adjustment as “Change in fair value of convertible debt, derivative debt, and SAFEs” on its income statement, which totaled $72.4 billion in the first half of 2026. This expense is non-cash, meaning the company has no money left over.
Amazon’s notes could be converted into up to 1.84 billion shares, according to the S-1. However, Amazon caps Anthropic’s “partially diluted” shares at 12%, which includes unissued shares such as stock options. Amazon can be exempted from the cap. Notes that cannot be converted remain outstanding and will be converted in later quarters subject to the same restrictions.
But paper money is only part of Amazon’s holdings. According to Amazon’s quarterly report ending June 30, the company invested an additional $10 billion in non-voting preferred stock, a type of stock, in the second quarter. Amazon did this by investing $5 billion in each of Anthropic’s previous two funding rounds. Combined with the $8 billion invested in notes from 2023 to 2025, Amazon’s total investment will be about $18 billion.
Beyond the stock price increase, Amazon will continue to receive significant revenue from Anthropic, which has committed to spending at least $110 billion on AWS over the next 10 years.
Google also stands to gain significantly from both its going public and its cloud computing deal with Anthropic. The search giant owned about 14% of Anthropic as of early last year and has made additional investments since then, including a $10 billion investment in April, according to court filings reported by the New York Times. (Google has likely been diluted in subsequent large funding rounds, with PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes telling TechCrunch he estimates its current stake is closer to 5.6%.) The company has also secured at least $114 billion in cloud contracts from Anthropic through 2033.
While venture capitalists expecting big paychecks have little reason to complain, S-1 revealed that the biggest winners of Anthropic’s IPO could likely be tech giants like Amazon. Amazon backed a potential rival early on and is now selling it much of the computing power it runs.
S-1 itself cautions that some of these cloud providers are also building competing AI models, and they may not always want the same things as Anthropic.
If you make a purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect editorial independence.
