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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s connections are paying off for him.
He became Google’s CEO after cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page vetted him, asking him to take part in an unconventional interview process for the position.
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“We all went to Burning Man together,” said Schmidt to Stephen Colbert in an interview. “There’s a rule at Burning Man. No photos.”
Now, an ex-girlfriend’s intro to Anthropic might earn him billions of dollars, massively increasing his net worth.
Here’s what’s happening with Schmidt and Anthropic.
Schmidt invested in Anthropic early through an ex. Its IPO could bring him billions
Starting in 2011, Schmidt dated a woman named Camilla Clark for three years.
She would later marry Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and, according to the Wall Street Journal, become a huge influence on the company.
This connection came in handy for Schmidt when, in 2018, he met with her and her then-partner, now husband to talk about Anthropic. He ended up investing in the company early and now owns about 1% of the company.
That investment ended up paying out — even if it seemed unlikely at first.
“The doctrine a few years ago was Anthropic would not be able to scale, because it wouldn’t be able to raise the money,” Schmidt told Bloomberg News.
Eight years later, Anthropic is heading toward a massive IPO before the year is up. It could be valued for as much as $2 trillion, according to the Financial Times. If so, Schmidt’s 1% investment could net him $20 billion, over half of his current net worth according to Forbes.
Considering he invested when the entire company was worth around $461 million, Schmidt has absolutely gotten his money’s worth.
Burning Man shows how your outside hobbies can impact your career
There’s no question that Burning Man was integral to Schmidt’s hiring at Google.
“Eric was… the only [CEO finalist] who went to Burning Man,” Brin told Berkman Center fellow Doc Searls. “We thought [that] was an important criterion.”
Burning Man has long held an important role for Silicon Valley workers. Its focus on creativity, building and tech merge well with skills that startup-oriented tech workers are expected to have, and its week-long collaborative atmosphere lends well to informal networking.