The Curious Case of Amazon's Anthropic Stake

They just... sent it to The Times. Everyone knows that Google has invested a lot of money into Anthropic.¹ However their ownership stake has been more of a mystery thanks to the often complex structure of such financings. But now it seems like we know Google's exact stake because while the official court documents are redacted when it comes to such information, Anthropic's lawyers decided to send the unredacted version!

Here's a report from Cade Metz, Nico Grant, and David McCabe on the matter:

Court documents recently obtained by The New York Times reveal Google’s stake in one of those start-ups, Anthropic, as well as how its investment in the young company is set to change.

Google owns 14 percent of Anthropic, according to legal filings that the A.I. start-up submitted as part of a Google antitrust case. But that investment gives Google little control over the company. The internet giant can only own up to 15 percent of Anthropic, according to the filings, and Google holds no voting rights, no board seats and no board observer rights at the start-up.

14% is quite a large stake! When a VC firm looks to lead a round in a startup, they're usually looking to own around 20% of the company. If it's earlier, it may be more. If it's later, it will be less. Google's ownership here is equivalent to a healthy stake that an investor might own in a late-stage startup – and especially healthy when you consider that this late-stage startup is now valued north of $60B.

By the magic of math, we can now know that Google's stake is worth $8.61B. Not bad for an investment that's somewhere just north of $3B – again, especially for a late-stage deal. It's sitting right around a 3x return (on paper)...