Former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt owns around 1% of Anthropic PBC thanks to his early investment in the startup, according to people familiar with the matter, positioning him for one of the largest individual windfalls from the company’s imminent public market debut.

Schmidt invested tens of millions of dollars in Anthropic’s Series A funding round, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorised to discuss private matters. It is unclear whether he has sold any part of his stake since the initial investment.

Anthropic’s highly anticipated IPO is set to generate massive windfalls for its employees and investors. The startup’s seven co-founders are already worth $8 billion each based on its last funding round, fortunes that propelled them onto the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world’s 500 richest people.

When Schmidt, 71, made his first bet on Anthropic in 2021, it was valued at $461 million, according to data company PitchBook. Investors indicated last week that a fair valuation for the company would be in the range of $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion. The upper end of that range would value Anthropic at more than 4,300 times its Series A valuation.

At that valuation, the Anthropic stake would boost Schmidt’s net worth by about one-third to nearly $80 billion, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. Even using Anthropic’s most recent valuation of $965 billion, Schmidt’s stake would add nearly $10 billion to his existing fortune of $57.5 billion.

Schmidt has become a prolific technology investor over the past decade and a half, investing through several platforms, including TomorrowVentures, Innovation Endeavors and his Hillspire family office, which PitchBook associates with hundreds of venture capital investments.

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