At least 95 investors now hold stakes in both Anthropic and OpenAI, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Coatue Management, and Altimeter Capital Management among them, according to Erin Griffith at the New York Times citing PitchBook. Funding direct competitors used to count as a conflict of interest, but Anthropic has taken more than $130 billion from roughly 300 backers and OpenAI more than $180 billion from about 230, sums big enough that few large funds could afford to sit out either one. The money bought less of the company than it once would have, since Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, and Iconiq each hold only 1% to 2% of Anthropic where Accel owned 11.4% of Facebook at its IPO and Benchmark 11% of Uber, and Spark Capital’s Yasmin Razavi is the sole outside investor on Anthropic’s board.
