Dario Amodei and Anthropic’s six other co-founders are preparing to pocket roughly $250 million each when the artificial intelligence company goes public next week. And that’s just the cash portion.Every founder has been estimated to keep stocks valued at about $18 billion; thus, this latest venture would provide a windfall for Anthropic’s founders who created the company five years ago.Founded in 2021, Anthropic now wants a $1.3 trillion valuation and hopes to raise at least $80 billion through its IPO and private investments. PitchBook put its May valuation near $965 billion.Anthropic founders can sell shares without giving up controlAccording to Anthropic’s Tuesday filing, each founder currently owns 3.6% to 3.7% of its voting common stock. They plan to sell nearly 3.4 million shares each at an expected offering price of $70 to $78. Afterward, each should retain about 3.2% of Class A shares. Together, they’ll own roughly 22%.The fortune estimations are based on the $74 midpoint of the forecasted price range. The funds are not parked in their checking accounts. The balance of their shares will be affected by the stock price of Anthropic, but the sale of shares will bring real revenue.Dario is chief executive. His sister, Daniela Amodei, is president and board chair. The other founders are Tom Brown, chief compute officer; Jared Kaplan, chief science officer; Sam McCandlish, chief architect; Jack Clark, who runs the Anthropic Institute, its internal AI safety research group; and Christopher Olah, who leads interpretability research.Their stock doesn’t tell the whole control story.With the complicated governance structure in Anthropic, the shares that the founders collectively have account for around 11.2% of the total voting power. The limited liability corporation owned by the founders will guarantee them at least 50.1% of all shareholder votes. The majority of the founders determine how the controlling stake is voted on.This structure enables the founders to appoint less than half of the directors on their own. A trust, set up with members of leadership and workers from the company, appoints a majority of the directors.Anthropic’s seven founders wrote in their prospectus: “Our aim is to help humankind chart a safe course through this technological evolution, open new frontiers of discovery, and bring forth an age of miracles.”Anthropic faces a tougher market as investors question its $1.3 trillion valuationAnthropic has lined up $26 billion in private investment from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Broadcom (AVGO), Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL), Micron (MU), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM). They’re buying Class N common stock at the same per-share price offered to IPO investors.“Everyone who owns our stock, whether an institution or an individual, becomes part of that effort,” the founders wrote in the prospectus.The privately placed shares aren’t registered in the public offering and won’t face underwriter lockup agreements.The recent midterms have brought Democrats to power in Congress, and state ballot initiatives may have slowed AI data center construction. Additionally, rising interest rates will make borrowing money to buy huge amounts of chips and electricity more costly for businesses.That helps explain why expectations have cooled. Anthropic was recently considering a $2 trillion valuation, but CNBC reported that shareholders questioned whether even $1.5 trillion was realistic. One investor described that target as a “stretch.”Still, institutional demand reportedly exceeds what SpaceX (SPCX) experienced at the same stage of its IPO. Orders already cover the shares available for allocation within the proposed price range. Anthropic expects to begin trading on the Nasdaq under ANT this month.Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company raised a record $85.7 billion when it went public roughly five months ago. Its market capitalization now sits just below $2 trillion, close to its debut valuation.Anthropic also introduced Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 on Monday. They’re its first frontier models since Dario urged a slower pace of advanced AI development in September. The company says both underwent extensive safety and alignment testing, supported by new evaluations and tools for monitoring their behavior after release.“We hope you will share our ambition to see it though,” the co-founders wrote to prospective shareholders.The company’s revenue stood at $33.24 billion for the nine-month period to September 30, increasing by about 1,200% compared to the same period last year.Anthropic posted a net loss of $104 billion, mainly due to the changes in the value of convertible notes and derivative liabilities. The company’s loss for the year 2025 was $25.1 billion.In an updated filing on Tuesday, it was revealed that Anthropic’s annualized revenue trajectory stood at about $81 billion in October, increasing by $10 billion from September.If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.