Venture Capital Firms Will Make Billions From Anthropic IPO, But Amazon Stands to Make Much (Much) More

Many investors stand to win big when Anthropic goes public. Stakes held by companies including Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, Sound Ventures and Spark Capital are expected to bring in billions.

Yet, according to Anthropic’s S-1, none of these venture capital firms own 5%, the threshold for inclusion in the table of major shareholders. This is very unusual. In a typical tech IPO, major venture capitalists hold double-digit stakes in the startups they have backed. The reason is Anthropic’s size. At its private valuation of $965 billion, a 1% stake is worth nearly $10 billion. So, for example, Menlo’s roughly $14 billion position represents only about 1.5% of the company, according to figures recently reported by Bloomberg.

Although venture capital firms do not have a large ownership percentage, Anthropic has sold significant stakes to strategic partners, companies that are also its business partners. Indeed, Amazon is likely the biggest financial beneficiary of the IPO.

Amazon first backed Anthropic in 2023 by pledging to invest up to $4 billion in the AI ​​company. Since then, Amazon has invested billions more in Anthropic. Instead of taking stock up front, Amazon structured much of its investment as convertible notes, a type of debt that converts into stock during an IPO or sale.

According to the S-1, Amazon holds convertible bonds with outstanding principal of $6.2 billion as of June 30. This represents Anthropic’s entire debt. But as Anthropic’s valuation has climbed through successive funding rounds, the shares into which those notes will be converted have become much more valuable. Amazon’s own filings valued its bond holdings at $97.9 billion as of June 30.

As the value of Amazon’s convertible bonds increased, Anthropic had to record the growing value of what it owed on its books. It reported the adjustments in its income statement under “change in fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs,” a line item that totaled $72.4 billion for the first half of 2026. The charge is non-cash, meaning no money left the company.

Amazon’s notes could be converted into 1.84 billion shares, according to the S-1. But a cap limits Amazon to 12% of Anthropic’s “partially diluted” shares, a figure that takes into account some shares not yet issued, such as stock options. Amazon can waive the cap. Notes that cannot be converted will remain in circulation and will be converted in subsequent quarters, subject to the same limit.

But the notes represent only part of Amazon’s holdings. It additionally invested $10 billion in non-voting preferred stock (a type of stock) in the second quarter, according to Amazon’s quarterly report for the period ended June 30. Amazon did this by investing $5 billion in each of Anthropic’s last two funding rounds. Combined with the $8 billion invested in the 2023-2025 notes, this brings Amazon’s total investment to approximately $18 billion.

Beyond its stock gains, Amazon will also continue to generate significant revenue from Anthropic, which has committed to spending at least $110 billion on AWS over the next 10 years.

Google is also expected to get a major windfall from the listing and its cloud computing deals with Anthropic. The search giant owned about 14% of Anthropic early last year, according to court documents reported by The New York Times, and has invested more since then, including $10 billion in April. (Google was likely diluted in subsequent massive funding rounds, with PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes telling TechCrunch he estimates its current stake at more than 5.6%.) It also secured at least $114 billion in cloud commitments from Anthropic through 2033.

Even though venture capital firms eyeing massive paydays have little reason to complain, the S-1 makes clear that the biggest winners from Anthropic’s IPO may well be tech giants like Amazon, which backed a potential rival early and is now selling it much of the computing power it runs on.

The S-1 itself warns that some of these cloud providers are also building competing AI models and that they don’t always want the same things as Anthropic.