Eric Schmidt allegedly promised ex a slice of his Anthropic jackpot — but she’s still waiting for it: sources

Five percent of one percent doesn’t sound like much — until it’s part of a trillion dollar deal.

Eric Schmidt stands to make billions when Anthropic goes public, but the ex-girlfriend who claims she helped him with the deal says he promised her a percentage — then cut her out when they broke up, sources told the Post.

The former Google boss, 71, reportedly owns about 1% of the AI company behind Claude, which former love Michelle Ritter, 32, says he promised to share with her.

At the $965 billion valuation Anthropic announced in May, Schmidt’s stake would be worth nearly $10 billion on paper, a figure that has likely risen after strong indications the company will hit the stock market later this month with a valuation of around $1.5 trillion.

Ritter is fighting in court with Schmidt, having filed a federal complaint citing her “Anthropic-related” work as among several projects for which she alleges she went unpaid. 

Ritter has also claimed that playboy Schmidt — who is married but has an open relationship with wife Wendy — allegedly promised Ritter 5% of his Anthropic stake in exchange for her work on the deal according to a source familiar with her claims.

Ritter claimed the ex-Google CEO repeatedly reassured her, “I’ve got you,” when it came to sharing out its value, the source said.

“She trusted him. Now she just wants to get paid,” the source said.

A source close to Ritter told The Post they’d personally heard Schmidt say in Los Angeles, where the two lived together for a period, that Ritter would get her share of the Anthropic shares.

Emails obtained by The Post indicate Ritter was directly involved in early talks with Anthropic’s founders —but the claim to 5% of his lucrative share does not appear in those emails, and has also not been included in subsequent court papers related to the pair’s bitter split in 2024.  

Ritter was a 26-year-old Columbia University law and MBA student when she first met Schmidt in 2020. They started dating and went on to launch tech incubator Steel Perlot together, with Schmidt backing it with $100 million.

In December 2020, Schmidt proposed setting up a temporary company with a $1 million budget to pay Anthropic’s seven founders and cover their computer and cloud bills, the emails show. He asked Ritter and Amanda Rubin of Hillspire, his family office, to help sort out the setup.

Rubin wrote to Ritter on Dec. 11 thanking her for “laying out the big issues for this deal.”

The next month, Ritter communicating with Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei directly.

“As Eric said, I’m handling the raise,” Ritter wrote to Daniela on Jan. 7, 2021, referring to the raising of funds for investment.  

That same month Daniela was asking Ritter to talk through the “next steps on incorporation and initial investment,” according to the emails.

Ritter asked how the seven founders would divide their shares and what they thought the company was worth before investors put in any money.

The next day, Daniela’s brother and fellow co-founder, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, proposed talking directly with Schmidt. Ritter told him Schmidt was looking forward to the call, the emails state.

Schmidt was then among the investors in Anthropic’s $124 million Series A, its first major funding round, in May 2021. He reportedly put in tens of millions of dollars.

“Michelle was the primary driver of the Anthropic Investment,” Elijah “Eli” Reinhardt, an early member of the Steel Perlot team, said in a signed declaration filed in support of Ritter in her federal lawsuit against Schmidt in Los Angeles.

Reinhardt said Ritter had brought the opportunity to Steel Perlot. However, he also wrote he believed Schmidt’s family office had put the money into the Series A investment.

“It didn’t seem right that [Steel Perlot] was sidelined on the deal since Michelle initiated it,” Reinhardt said in the declaration. 

Reinhardt said he never received a share of gains he was promised on investments he worked on with Steel Perlot. He did not return The Post’s calls seeking comment.

Schmidt and Ritter broke up in 2024, after he was spotted with another woman.

In court papers filed a year later, Ritter accused Schmidt of rape and spying on her with hidden cameras, allegations which were later ruled to be false, with an arbitrator ordering her to pay $12 million in damages to Schmidt.

This September A California judge ruled Ritter had disregarded orders of the arbitrator in the case and had “refused to respond to discovery, produce documents or sit for a deposition, and missed several hearings,” according to Law360 and refused to vacate the ruling.

There is no indication Ritter has paid any of the $12m settlement owed.

In a statement to The Post, Ritter said, “Anthropic is one of many deals that Eric and his family office have wrongfully taken away my contractual shares in.”

“Eric and his family office should stop hiding behind a personal breakup as an excuse to not pay for work. Like others, Eric and his team think they are above the law,” she added.

Schmidt’s lawyer, Patricia Glaser, told The Post in November 2025 Ritter’s lawsuit was “the latest desperate and destructive effort to publish false and defamatory statements,” about him, and an attempt to escape her own accountability.

A representative for Schmidt declined The Post’s request for comment.

A source close to Ritter recalled a day when Schmidt stepped off his private jet at a Bay Area airport to meet Ritter. The two said they were headed to a meeting with Anthropic.

“He fooled us all,” the source claimed.