达里奥·阿莫代伊（Dario Amodei）或许是2023年他造访的比弗利山庄住宅中最不为人知的人之一。人工智能公司Anthropic PBC的首席执行官与演员转型为风险投资家的阿什顿·库彻（Ashton Kutcher），以及拥有这栋房子的传奇音乐经理人兼行业经纪人盖伊·奥塞亚里（Guy Oseary）面对面坐着。奥塞亚里墙上挂着约翰·列侬（John Lennon）和大卫·鲍伊（David Bowie）等摇滚巨星的装裱艺术品。
Dario Amodei was arguably one of the least famous people in the Beverly Hills home he visited in 2023. The Anthropic PBC chief executive officer sat across from actor-turned-venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher, and Guy Oseary, the legendary music manager and industry broker who owned the house. Oseary’s framed art by rock legends like John Lennon and David Bowie hung on the wall behind them.
这群人花了数小时讨论AI安全、打造更好人工智能模型的全球竞赛，以及Anthropic的整体愿景，当时Anthropic仍是OpenAI的一个容易被忽视的挑战者。会议结束时，奥塞亚里、库彻和团队决定通过他们的投资公司Sound Ventures参与这家Claude制造商的首次机构主导的融资轮次。
The group spent hours discussing AI safety, the global race to build better artificial intelligence models a By Natasha Mascarenhas The group spent hours discussing AI safety, the global race to build better artificial intelligence models and the overall vision for Anthropic, then still an easily overlooked challenger to OpenAI. By the end of the meeting, Oseary, Kutcher and the team had decided to participate in the Claude maker’s first institutionally led funding round through their investment firm, Sound Ventures.
“我看他和那些脑海中充满各种想法、将进入录音室制作出令人惊叹专辑的最伟大音乐家没有什么不同，”奥塞亚里近日在比弗利山庄接受采访时回忆其公司投资决策时说。“这可能是有史以来最伟大的首张专辑之一。”这家与好莱坞有联系的低调风投公司，如今有望从Anthropic即将进行的首次公开募股（IPO）中获得丰厚回报，IPO预计将在未来几天进行。
“I see him no different than one of the greatest musicians who’s got all of these ideas in their minds, and they’re going to go in the studio and make an incredible album,” Oseary said in a recent interview from Beverly Hills, recalling his firm’s decision to invest. “This might be one of the greatest debut albums of all time.”The under-the-radar venture firm with Hollywood ties is now poised for a substantial windfall from Anthropic’s initial public offering, expected in the coming days.
知情人士透露，Sound Ventures持有这家AI公司大约0.5%的股份。根据彭博社的估计，按Anthropic目前的目标IPO估值1.4万亿美元计算，该股份价值约7万亿美元。
Sound Ventures owns roughly half a percent of the AI company, according to a person familiar with the matter. That stake would be worth approximately $7 billion at Anthropic’s current target IPO valuation of $1.4 trillion, according to Bloomberg estimates.
知情人士称，按该估值，这笔投资将实现大约1500%的增长，远超Sound Ventures多年来向Anthropic投入的总计4.35亿美元。这些知情人士因信息属私密而要求匿名。
At that level, the investment would mark a roughly 1,500% increase from the total $435 million that Sound Ventures has poured into Anthropic over the years, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is private.
Sound Ventures拒绝就回报置评。Anthropic拒绝置评。
Sound Ventures declined to comment on returns. Anthropic declined to comment.
Anthropic备受期待的华尔街首次公开募股将成为一场几乎史无前例的财富创造事件。它将在员工中造就新一代百万富翁和亿万富翁，并为包括埃里克·施密特在内的知名个人投资者，以及红杉资本和Spark Capital等顶级风投机构带来数十亿美元的回报。
Anthropic’s long-awaited Wall Street debut is set to be an almost unprecedented wealth-creation event. It will mint a new generation of millionaires and billionaires among its staff, and yield billions of dollars in returns for a who’s who of individual investors, such as Eric Schmidt, and top venture firms, such as Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital.
然而，与许多这些获益者相比，Sound Ventures的知名度较低。Sound Ventures成立于2015年，专注于投资早期科技初创公司，已对数十家公司进行投资，包括Hugging Face Inc.，英伟达公司近期同意以130亿美元收购该公司，以及World Labs，超微半导体公司已同意以82亿美元收购该公司。库彻今年早些时候离开，去创办自己的风投公司。
Compared with many of those winners, however, Sound Ventures has a lower profile. Founded in 2015 to invest in early-stage technology startups, Sound Ventures has made dozens of bets on companies, including Hugging Face Inc., which Nvidia Corp. recently agreed to buy for $13 billion, and World Labs, which Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has agreed to purchase for $8.2 billion. Kutcher left earlier this year to launch his own venture firm.
奥塞里是通过Salesforce Ventures认识Anthropic团队的，Salesforce Ventures是Salesforce Inc.的风投部门，也是这家AI开发商的投资者。这位音乐大亨将Salesforce首席执行官马克·贝尼奥夫视为自己最好的朋友之一。
Oseary was introduced to Anthropic’s team by way of Salesforce Ventures, a VC arm of Salesforce Inc. and an investor in the AI developer. The music mogul counts Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff as one of his best friends.
当时Anthropic仍是一家相对较小的公司，被OpenAI所掩盖，其七位创始人此前都在OpenAI工作。更复杂的是，Sound Ventures此前已投资OpenAI，按照当时硅谷沙丘路的标准，投资竞争对手在某种程度上是禁忌。
Anthropic was then still a relatively small company overshadowed by OpenAI, where all seven of its founders had previously worked. To complicate matters, Sound Ventures had already invested in OpenAI, making a potential bet on a competitor something of a taboo by the standards of Sand Hill Road at the time.
奥塞里说，他不知道风投机构通常会避免支持其投资组合公司的竞争对手。“这在直觉上感觉是正确的道路，”奥塞里说。“我没有经验知道这种事不会发生。”奥塞里表示，在库彻获得OpenAI首席执行官萨姆·奥尔特曼的许可后，Sound Ventures推进了与Anthropic的交易。此后，一些风投机构通过同时押注两家领先的AI初创公司来追逐回报。
Oseary said he didn’t know venture firms typically stay away from backing competitors of their portfolio companies. “This felt intuitively the right path,” Oseary said. “I didn’t have the experience to know this doesn’t happen.”Sound Ventures moved forward with the Anthropic deal after Kutcher got permission from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oseary said. A number of venture firms have since chased returns by betting on both of the leading AI startups.
“没有OpenAI，对我来说就不会有Anthropic，”奥塞里说。据Sound Ventures管理合伙人埃菲·爱泼斯坦透露，该风投公司迄今已向OpenAI投资超过4亿美元；爱泼斯坦也参加了2023年与阿莫迪的会面。（OpenAI拒绝置评。）在AI热潮的大部分时间里，许多人都会认为OpenAI是更好的选择。该公司凭借ChatGPT的发布掀起了生成式AI热潮，并很快确立了自身作为融资巨头的地位。
“There would be no Anthropic without OpenAI for me,” Oseary said. Sound Ventures has invested more than $400 million in OpenAI to date, according to Effie Epstein, a managing partner at the venture firm who was also part of the 2023 meeting with Amodei. (OpenAI declined to comment.) For much of the AI boom, many would have viewed OpenAI as the better bet. The company kicked off the generative AI frenzy with the release of ChatGPT and soon established itself as a fundraising juggernaut.
然而，今年Anthropic凭借其AI软件需求激增，在估值上超越了OpenAI。Anthropic目前正处于上市的边缘，抢先于OpenAI实现股市首次亮相。
This year, however, Anthropic leapfrogged OpenAI by valuation after seeing demand surge for its AI software. Anthropic is now on the cusp of going public, beating OpenAI to a stock-market debut.
在最近几周的不同时间点，曾有理由怀疑Anthropic是否能按计划在感恩节前完成IPO。该公司正面临更为波动的市场，因为投资者对支撑AI建设的借贷狂潮以及英伟达创始人兼首席执行官黄仁勋被免职的后续影响感到不安。
At various points in recent weeks, there have been reasons to doubt whether Anthropic would pull off its IPO before Thanksgiving, as planned. The company is contending with a more volatile market, as investors grow jittery about the borrowing binge underpinning the AI build-out as well as the fallout from the ouster of Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
奥塞里本人则对Anthropic的未来并不失眠。他将阿莫迪比作另一位他合作了近四十年的偶像：麦当娜。
Oseary, for his part, isn’t losing sleep over Anthropic’s future. He compares Amodei to another icon he’s worked with for nearly four decades: Madonna.
“她被看衰的次数，或者人们怀疑她的次数，或者她不按别人的世界行事的次数——她没有妥协，她真正坚持了自己的愿景，”他说。“达里奥也是如此。”
“The amount of times that she was written off, or the amount of times that people doubted her, or the amount of times that she did not formulate to anyone else’s world — she didn’t compromise, she really stuck to her vision,” he said. “Dario’s like that.”