As artificial intelligence pioneer Anthropic prepares to go public, a massive wave of wealth is set to wash over the venture capital firms that backed the startup in its earlier, riskier days. Stakes held by prominent venture capital investors including Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Sound Ventures, and Spark Capital are widely expected to generate billions of dollars in returns once the company makes its public market debut.
Yet, a closer examination of Anthropic’s recently filed S-1 registration statement reveals a fascinating quirk of scale: none of those traditional venture capital firms owns 5% of the company, which is the standard threshold required to be included in the principal stockholders’ table.
This absence is highly unusual for a major technology IPO. In a typical venture-backed public offering, lead investors routinely hold double-digit percentage stakes in the startups they supported from infancy. The discrepancy in Anthropic’s case comes down entirely to its staggering scale. At its monumental private valuation of $965 billion, a mere 1% stake in Anthropic is worth nearly $10 billion. Consequently, Menlo Ventures’ roughly $14 billion position represents only about 1.5% of the entire enterprise, according to figures recently reported by Bloomberg.
While traditional venture capital firms may lack sizable percentage stakes due to this astronomical dilution and valuation, Anthropic has sold massive stakes to strategic partners—companies that simultaneously serve as its crucial business allies. Among them, retail and cloud computing behemoth Amazon is positioned to become the single largest financial beneficiary of the IPO.
Amazon first forged its alliance with Anthropic in 2023, committing to invest up to $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup. In the months and years that followed, Amazon steadily deepened its financial ties by pouring billions more into the enterprise. Rather than taking all of its stock upfront, Amazon structured a significant portion of its early support through convertible notes, a specific type of debt instrument that automatically converts into equity shares upon the occurrence of a qualifying event like an initial public offering or a corporate sale.
According to Anthropic’s S-1 filing, Amazon held convertible notes with a staggering $6.2 billion in principal outstanding as of June 30. That figure accounts for the entirety of Anthropic’s current debt load. However, as Anthropic’s valuation skyrocketed across successive, highly competitive funding rounds, the underlying shares into which those notes are set to convert have appreciated exponentially in value. Amazon’s own corporate filings valued its note holdings at an astonishing $97.9 billion as of June 30.
Because the market value of Amazon’s convertible notes surged so dramatically, Anthropic was required under accounting rules to record the growing financial obligation on its corporate books. The artificial intelligence company reported these massive adjustments on its income statement under the line item designated for the "change in fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities, and SAFEs." That single line totaled $72.4 billion for the first half of 2026 alone. Crucially, this massive charge is entirely non-cash, meaning that not a single dollar actually left Anthropic’s bank accounts as a result of the accounting adjustment.
The S-1 filing indicates that Amazon’s notes could ultimately convert into as many as 1.84 billion shares. However, a structural cap limits Amazon to owning no more than 12% of Anthropic’s "partially diluted" share count—a metric that accounts for certain unissued shares, such as stock options. Amazon retains the option to waive this cap if it chooses. Any notes that cannot immediately convert due to this restriction will remain outstanding and are slated to convert in subsequent quarters, subject to the exact same regulatory and structural limits.
These convertible notes, however, represent only one component of Amazon’s sprawling financial footprint in Anthropic. The e-commerce and cloud giant further injected $10 billion in nonvoting preferred stock—a direct form of equity—during the second quarter, according to Amazon’s quarterly financial report for the period ending June 30. Amazon accomplished this by deploying $5 billion in each of Anthropic’s last two major funding rounds. Combined with the $8 billion it invested via convertible notes from 2023 through 2025, Amazon’s cumulative investment in the artificial intelligence startup climbs to approximately $18 billion.
Beyond its massive unrealized stock gains and impending equity windfall, Amazon is also positioned to reap a continuous stream of substantial revenue from Anthropic. The AI company has formally committed to spending at least $110 billion on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure over the next decade.
Amazon is not the only technology titan poised for a historic financial harvest. Google is similarly set for a major windfall, deriving gains from both the public listing and its extensive cloud computing arrangements with Anthropic. The search engine giant held approximately 14% of Anthropic as of early last year, according to court filings that were previously reported by The New York Times, and has continued to invest heavily since then, including a $10 billion injection in April. While Google’s direct ownership percentage was likely diluted during Anthropic’s subsequent and massive funding rounds—with PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes estimating its current stake is closer to 5.6%—the company has concurrently secured at least $114 billion in cloud computing commitments from Anthropic through the year 2033.
For the venture capital firms that backed Anthropic early on, the upcoming public debut guarantees historic paydays that leave little room for complaint. Yet, the S-1 filing makes it crystal clear that the absolute biggest winners of Anthropic’s public offering may well be the major tech conglomerates. These strategic partners not only placed visionary bets on a would-be competitor during its infancy, but they also now sell the startup the vast majority of the expensive computing power required to run its sophisticated models.
At the same time, Anthropic’s regulatory filing includes candid warnings regarding these foundational relationships. The S-1 points out that several of these vital cloud providers are simultaneously engaged in building rival artificial intelligence models of their own, creating a complex dynamic where corporate partners may not always share the exact same strategic interests or long-term goals as Anthropic.
Comments (0)