当 Anthropic 上市时，许多投资者有望获得巨额收益。包括 Menlo Ventures、Sequoia、Sound Ventures 和 Spark Capital 在内的公司持有的股份预计将回报数十亿美元。
然而，根据 Anthropic 的 S-1 文件，这些风险投资公司中没有任何一家持有 5% 的股份，这是被列入主要股东表的门槛。这非常不寻常。在典型的科技 IPO 中，主导的风险投资者在其支持的新创企业中持有两位数的股份比例。原因在于 Anthropic 的规模。在其 9650 亿美元的私人估值下，1% 的股份价值近 100 亿美元，因此，例如，Menlo 的大约 $140 亿头寸 仅占公司约 1.5%，据 最近报道 的彭博数据。
虽然这些风投公司可能缺乏大比例的股份，但 Anthropic 向战略伙伴（也是其业务合作伙伴的公司）出售了大量股份。事实上，亚马逊可能是此次 IPO 最大的单一金融受益者。
亚马逊早在 2023 年就支持了 Anthropic，承诺投资高达 40 亿美元 给这家 AI 公司。此后，亚马逊又向 Anthropic 投入了数十亿美元。亚马逊没有 upfront 获取股票，而是将其大部分投资结构化为可转换票据，这是一种在 IPO 或出售时转换为股票的债务类型。
根据 S-1 文件，截至 6 月 30 日，亚马逊持有本金余额为 62 亿美元的可转换票据。这是 Anthropic 的全部债务负担。但随着 Anthropic 在连续融资轮次中的估值飙升，这些票据将转换成的股票变得更有价值。亚马逊自己的文件显示，截至 6 月 30 日，其票据持仓价值为 $979 亿。
随着亚马逊可转换票据价值的飙升，Anthropic 必须在账面上记录其所欠债务的增长价值。它在损益表中报告了这些调整，列名为“可转换票据、衍生负债和 SAFEs 的公允价值变动”，该科目在 2026 年上半年总计为 724 亿美元。这笔费用是非现金性质的，意味着没有资金流出公司。
根据 S-1 文件，亚马逊的票据最多可转换为 18.4 亿股股票。但有一个上限限制亚马逊只能占 Anthropic “部分稀释”股本的 12%，该数字计算了一些尚未发行的股票，如股票期权。亚马逊可以放弃此上限。无法转换的票据将继续存续，并在后续季度转换，受相同上限约束。
但这些票据只是亚马逊持股的一部分。根据截至 6 月 30 日的季度报告，亚马逊在第二季度进一步投资了 100 亿美元购买无投票权优先股（一种股权）。亚马逊通过在其最后两轮融资中各投资 50 亿美元来实现这一点。加上 2023 年至 2025 年间在票据上投资的 80 亿美元，亚马逊的总投资额约为 180 亿美元。
除了股票收益外，亚马逊还将继续从 Anthropic 获得大量收入，后者承诺在未来 10 年内至少在 AWS 上花费 1100 亿美元。
谷歌也将从上市及其与 Anthropic 的云计算交易中迎来重大丰收。据 纽约时报 报道的 法院文件 显示，去年年初谷歌持有 Anthropic 约 14% 的股份，此后又进行了更多投资，包括 4 月的 100 亿美元。（谷歌可能在随后的大规模融资轮次中被稀释，PitchBook 分析师 Harrison Rolfes 告诉 TechCrunch，他估计其当前持股比例更接近 5.6%。）它还确保了 Anthropic 到 2033 年至少 1140 亿美元的计算能力承诺。
尽管面临巨额回报的风投公司几乎没有理由抱怨，但 S-1 文件清楚地表明，Anthropic IPO 的最大赢家可能是像亚马逊这样的科技巨头，它早期支持了一个潜在的竞争对手，而现在向其出售运行所需的很大一部分计算能力。
S-1 文件本身警告称，那些云提供商中也有一些正在构建 rival AI 模型，并且它们并不总是希望 Anthropic 所希望的那样。
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Marina Temkin 是 TechCrunch 的风险投资和初创企业记者。在加入 TechCrunch 之前，她曾为 PitchBook 和 Venture Capital Journal 撰写关于风投的文章。在她的职业生涯早期，Marina 是一名财务分析师，并获得了 CFA 持证人资格。
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Many investors stand to win big when Anthropic goes public. Stakes held by firms including Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, Sound Ventures, and Spark Capital are expected to return billions.
Yet according to Anthropic’s S-1, none of those VC firms owns 5%, the threshold for being included in the principal stockholders’ table. That’s highly unusual. In a typical tech IPO, lead venture investors hold double-digit-percentage stakes in the startups they backed. The reason is Anthropic’s size. At its $965 billion private valuation, a 1% stake is worth nearly $10 billion, so, for example, Menlo’s roughly $14 billion position is only about 1.5% of the company, according to recently reported Bloomberg figures.
While the venture firms may lack sizable percentage stakes, Anthropic sold large stakes to strategic partners, companies that are also its business partners. Indeed, Amazon is likely the single largest financial beneficiary of the IPO.
Amazon first backed Anthropic in 2023 with a commitment to invest up to $4 billion in the AI company. Since then, Amazon has poured billions more into Anthropic. Instead of taking stock upfront, Amazon structured much of its investment as convertible notes, a type of debt that converts into shares upon an IPO or sale.
According to the S-1, Amazon holds convertible notes with $6.2 billion in principal outstanding as of June 30. That is Anthropic’s entire debt load. But as Anthropic’s valuation soared across successive funding rounds, the shares those notes will convert into became far more valuable. Amazon’s own filings valued its note holdings at $97.9 billion as of June 30.
As the value of Amazon’s convertible notes surged, Anthropic had to record the growing value of what it owes on its books. It reported the adjustments on its income statement under “change in fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities, and SAFEs,” a line 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 convert into as many as 1.84 billion shares, according to the S-1. But a cap limits Amazon to 12% of Anthropic’s “partially diluted” share count, a figure that counts some shares not yet issued, such as stock options. Amazon can waive the cap. Notes that can’t convert will stay outstanding and convert in later quarters, subject to the same limit.
But the notes are only part of Amazon’s holdings. It further invested $10 billion in nonvoting preferred stock (a type of equity), 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 it invested in the notes from 2023 through 2025, that brings Amazon’s total investment to about $18 billion.
Beyond its stock gains, Amazon will also continue to earn significant revenue from Anthropic, which has committed to spend at least $110 billion on AWS over the next 10 years.
Google, too, is set for a major windfall from both the listing and its cloud computing deals with Anthropic. The search giant held about 14% of Anthropic as of early last year, according to court filings that were reported by The New York Times, and has invested more since, including $10 billion in April. (Google was likely diluted in subsequent and massive funding rounds, with PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes telling TechCrunch he estimates its current stake at closer to 5.6%.) It has also secured at least $114 billion in cloud commitments from the Anthropic through 2033.
While VCs set for massive paydays have little reason to complain, the S-1 makes it clear that the biggest winners of Anthropic’s IPO may well be tech giants like Amazon, which backed a would-be rival early on and now sell it much of the computing power it runs on.
The S-1 itself warns that some of those cloud providers also build rival AI models and that they may not always want the same things that Anthropic does.
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Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her career, Marina was a financial analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation.
You can contact or verify outreach from Marina by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at +1 347-683-3909 on Signal.
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