With OpenAI on the verge of completing a new $100 billion round and Anthropic just closing its own monster $30 billion raise, one thing is clear: the concept of investor “loyalty” hangs in the balance.
At least a dozen direct investors in OpenAI were announced as backers of the $30 billion raised by Antropic earlier this month, including Founders Fund, Iconiq, Insight Partners and Sequoia Capital.
Some dual investments are understandable if they come from the world of hedge funds or asset managers, where their MO is still largely invested in public stocks (competitors or not). These include D1, Fidelity and TPG.
One of them was a little shocking. BlackRock’s affiliate funds joined Anthropic’s $30 billion raise, even though BlackRock CEO and board member Adebayo Ogunlesi is also on OpenAI’s board.
It’s true that in this world, if the various BlackRock funds get a chance to own OpenAI stock, they’re likely to take it, regardless of the personal association of a member of their senior management. (BlackRock operates all types of funds including mutual, closed-end, EFT). And we all know the history of OpenAI and Microsoft’s relationship, why Microsoft is hedging its bets. Same for Nvidia.
But venture capital funds—until now—worked differently.
VCs sell themselves as “founder friendly” and “helpful”. The idea is that when a venture capital firm buys part of a startup company, the investor will help that startup succeed, especially against their main rivals. If you own both OpenAI and Anthropic, who are you loyal to besides your own investors?
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Moreover, startups are private companies. They usually share confidential information about the business status with their direct investors. This is data that is not publicly disclosed as is the case with public companies. In many cases, venture capital firms also take board seats, an additional level of fiduciary responsibility to their portfolio companies.
What makes this particular case even more interesting is that Sam Altman is from the venture capital world himself as the former president of Y Combinator. He knows the drill. In 2024, he reportedly gave his investors a list of OpenAI rivals he didn’t want them to support as well. It largely included companies founded by people who left OpenAI, including Anthropic, xAI, and Safe Superintelligence.
Altman later denied telling OpenAI investors that they would be excluded from future rounds if they backed his list of perceived rivals. Altman admitted he said that if they “make non-passive investments” they will no longer receive OpenAI’s confidential business information, according to documents in the lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Business Insider reported.
AI is also crashing due to record amounts of money being raised by the biggest AI labs as they experience unprecedented growth (and unprecedented data center needs). At some point when the hat is passed to collections and the needs are so great and the returns so great, who can be expected to say no?
It turns out that not all venture capitalists have slipped down the slippery slope just yet. Andreessen Horowitz supports OpenAI, but not (yet) Anthropic. For example, Menlo Ventures backs Anthropic but (for now) OpenAI.
In fact, in our admittedly non-exhaustive research, we found a dozen investors who appear to have direct investments in only one of these companies, not both.
Others include Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Greenoaks. (Note: We originally asked Anthropic Claude to provide us with a list of dual investors. Almost as many entries got it wrong as it got it right. All for a very cool tech whose work sometimes remains less credible than that of an intern.)
Yet, as we’ve previously stated, it’s remarkable that this long-standing rule has been overturned by some of the Valley’s most respected firms, such as Sequioa. One investor we spoke to simply shrugged and said that as long as the company didn’t have a board seat, no one could see the harm in it.
However, conflict of interest policies should now become the next thing founders ask about before signing that term sheet, no matter who it’s from.