Eric Schmidt Invests in Anthropic Through Ex-Girlfriend's Introduction
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt had a romantic relationship with Cami Clark, the wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. According to The Wall Street Journal, during Anthropic's early stages in 2021, Clark introduced Schmidt as an early investor in the company.
Bloomberg recently disclosed that Schmidt currently holds about 1% of Anthropic. He invested tens of millions of dollars in the Series A round in 2021 when the company's valuation was approximately $461 million. Based on market discussions of a potential IPO valuation of around $2 trillion, this stake could be worth nearly $20 billion.
Clark previously dated Schmidt for about three years before starting a relationship with Amodei around 2014, and they married in 2022. Schmidt visited the couple's apartment in San Francisco in 2018 and was impressed by Amodei's ideas. Anthropic completed a $124 million Series A funding round in May 2021, with Schmidt as one of the participating investors.
Clark currently does not hold an official position at Anthropic but reportedly often attends events like Davos as a strategic advisor to Amodei and communicates with investors. She had proposed establishing an investment vehicle called the "Mother of AGI Fund" to formalize her role, but did not receive support from other co-founders.
Schmidt attends the Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada every year. He recalled that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin ranked him first for the CEO position after learning he also attended Burning Man, and they ultimately hired him after attending the event together.
Personal networks played a crucial role in early financing, with Schmidt's personal funds entering when the company's valuation was very low, and subsequent rapid valuation increases providing significant returns for early investors. Traditional institutions and strategic investors entered later rounds at higher valuations, while early individual investors locked in at lower costs.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Eric Schmidt was invited to become CEO of Google in 2001 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, having previously worked at Sun Microsystems and Novell. After stepping down, he continued to invest in technology and AI through his family office and investment entities, including investments in companies like Mistral. He dated Cami Clark around 2011, who later introduced him to Amodei, who was still at OpenAI at the time.
In terms of capital pathways, Schmidt participated in Anthropic's Series A round in 2021 with personal funds, investing approximately $124 million when the company was only a few months old and had no products, with a valuation of about $461 million. This round was led by Jaan Tallinn, with participants mostly being individual investors with AI safety backgrounds. Clark had proposed managing related investments through the "Mother of AGI Fund" to formalize her role, but faced opposition from co-founders like Daniela Amodei, leading Schmidt to invest directly.
This is similar to seed rounds driven by personal relationships in early venture capital, such as key angel investments introduced through founders' social networks. Anthropic is currently transitioning from a research lab to a large AI company preparing for an IPO, with its valuation soaring from hundreds of millions in the Series A to discussions in the hundreds of billions to trillions.
Essentially, this represents capital concentration: funds entering early through personal networks and low valuations achieve valuation leaps in subsequent rounds of financing and strategic investments (including from Amazon, Google, etc.). Mechanically, social trust reduces the cost of early information asymmetry, allowing personal capital to lock in shares before products and revenues are established; as computational power and commercialization advance, later entrants can only enter at higher prices, resulting in disproportionate returns for early holders.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Early entry relies on relationships, later entry relies on valuations.
- Trust turns information asymmetry into low-cost shares.
- Networks precede products, shares precede consensus.