In the summer of 2016, a technology journalist named Jack Clark asked his Bloomberg editor if they could go for a walk. The two ended up on a bench overlooking San Francisco Bay, where Clark broke the news that he was leaving his relatively comfortable job covering Silicon Valley to join a little-known artificial intelligence research outfit called OpenAI.
His editor, Alistair Barr, told him it was a terrible idea.
In fairness, OpenAI was less than a year old, artificial intelligence was still a relatively niche obsession, and the organisation's financial prospects were far from obvious. Clark was walking away from an established media company to join an experimental nonprofit with no discernible business model.
A decade later, that decision could make him one of the richest people on the planet.
After five years at OpenAI, Clark made another move in early 2021, joining six former colleagues to establish Anthropic, the company behind Claude and now one of the most valuable businesses in the global AI boom.
With Anthropic preparing for one of the largest technology IPOs in history, its latest regulatory filing has offered a glimpse at the extraordinary wealth about to be created.
And the numbers are almost difficult to comprehend.
According to the filing, Clark beneficially owns approximately 242.3 million Anthropic shares, including certain options and restricted stock units. At the company's last private share price, his stake is already worth an estimated US$14.3 billion. Should Anthropic achieve the US$2 trillion valuation previously floated ahead of its IPO, that figure could double to US$28.6 billion (~AU$41 billion).
More recent reports suggest investors are pushing for a somewhat more conservative valuation of US$1.5 trillion to US$1.6 trillion, but even at the lower end, the former journalist would be sitting on a fortune exceeding US$20 billion.
Not a bad return on a career change.
And Clark is hardly the only person whose life could be transformed by the listing. Entrepreneur Sam Parr estimates that at a US$2 trillion valuation, approximately 1,000 Anthropic employees could find themselves sitting on equity worth more than US$100 million apiece.
For context, according to Henley & Partners, there are roughly 11,000 people living in the United States with US$100 million or more in liquid investable assets. That means Anthropic could, in a single IPO, create the equivalent of an additional 1,000 members of America's ultra-wealthy centi-millionaire club.
Put another way, roughly one in every 12 members of that expanded club would owe their nine-figure fortune to a single company.
Granted, it's not a perfect comparison. Anthropic's employees aren't exclusively American, and much of that wealth would remain tied up in shares rather than liquid assets. Nevertheless, the sheer concentration of wealth creation is extraordinary, particularly for a business founded less than six years ago.
Of course, the financial performance underpinning those fortunes is almost as remarkable.
Anthropic generated US$33.24 billion in revenue during the first nine months of 2026, an increase of 1,206% year-on-year. Its third quarter alone brought in almost US$17 billion. For perspective, the company generated just US$41 million across the entirety of 2023.
Then there's the rather extraordinary US$104 billion net loss reported over those nine months, although that figure requires some unpacking.
Approximately US$94.3 billion of it relates to largely non-cash accounting adjustments associated with the rising value of its convertible financing arrangements. The company's actual operating loss over the period was a considerably more manageable US$1.26 billion.
The more confronting figure is perhaps further down the accounts, where Anthropic reveals the staggering cost of keeping the AI revolution running.
The company recorded US$18.8 billion in computing and infrastructure expenses over those nine months, and has disclosed an eye-watering US$895.4 billion in contractual spending commitments and leases, predominantly related to the infrastructure required to train and operate its AI models.
Of that sum, approximately US$447.5 billion is expected to be incurred before the end of 2030, with almost US$70 billion falling due over the next 12 months alone.
In other words, Anthropic has built one of the fastest-growing businesses in history, but sustaining that momentum will require a level of capital investment that would have been almost unimaginable a few years ago.
There's one final wrinkle to Clark's extraordinary prospective payday. Anthropic's seven co-founders have each pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal equity to philanthropic causes. The commitments are voluntary and not legally binding, but they offer an interesting footnote to what could otherwise become one of history's great personal wealth-creation stories.
Back in 2016, Clark's boss Alistair Barr thought he [Clark] was making a terrible mistake by abandoning journalism for an obscure AI startup. He later admitted that he had badly misjudged the opportunity.
Ten years on, the former reporter could soon be worth more than the combined fortunes of some of the technology executives he once covered.
Whether Anthropic's future shareholders enjoy anything approaching the same return is another question entirely.