Anthropic's founders seek to keep voting control ahead of IPO
Anthropic is asking shareholders to approve a structure giving its seven co-founders a combined 50.1% voting stake before the company goes public. The move comes as the firm's secondary-market valuation reached $1.5 trillion.
Anthropic plans to ask shareholders in the coming days to approve a new voting structure that would let its seven co-founders retain control of the company after it goes public, according to a report by The Information.
Under the proposed arrangement, CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders would receive special shares granting them a combined 50.1% of the vote on most corporate matters. The arrangement requires that at least three of the seven founders maintain a minimum ownership stake for the structure to hold.
An unusual group approach
Super-voting shares are not a new concept — Mark Zuckerberg used a similar mechanism to retain control of Meta, as did Evan Spiegel at Snap. What sets Anthropic's plan apart is that control would be distributed across the entire founding group rather than concentrated in one person.
The rationale stems from the fact that each of the seven founders, including Amodei, reportedly owns only about 2% of the company. All seven pledged in January to give away 80% of their wealth, with Amodei warning at the time that AI-driven concentration of wealth could destabilize society. The new shares carry no additional economic value but would preserve the founders' control once trading begins publicly.
The plan includes further provisions: Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust would continue to appoint most board members, the founders' board seats would increase from two to three, and employees would receive their own stock allowing them to break ties on certain issues.
The five-year-old company was valued at $965 billion in May but has since been valued at $1.5 trillion on the secondary market. Its upcoming IPO is expected to reflect this higher valuation.
