About 90 venture capital firms have invested in both OpenAI and Anthropic, with OpenAI sharing roughly 42 percent of its investors with its rival.

According to a WIRED analysis of PitchBook data, about 90 venture capital firms and other money managers have invested in both OpenAI and Anthropic over the past few years. Roughly a third of Anthropic investors are also OpenAI backers, including Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures, Emerson Collective, and Sound Ventures.

Historically, venture capital firms concentrated bets on one company in a competitive area to avoid conflicts of interest, since companies share proprietary information with investors. But as investment firms have grown larger and stayed private longer while raising record sums—OpenAI and Anthropic each have raised well more than $100 billion at valuations approaching $1 trillion—individual investor ownership stakes have become smaller, reducing concerns about conflicts.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic aim to make their stock market debuts this year. Investors with stakes in both companies may be hedging their odds of realizing gains, since last year just two-thirds of IPOs attracted a significant pop in value. A handful of major venture capital firms, including Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, Menlo Ventures, and General Catalyst, have supported only one of the two AI labs.