Anthropic Founders Seek 50.1% Voting Lock Ahead of IPO

Anthropic is asking shareholders to approve a dual-class structure that would hand CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders special shares carrying a combined 50.1% of the vote on most corporate matters. The Information reports the vote could come "in the coming days."

The structure comes with a condition: the founders keep their concentrated voting power only as long as at least three of them maintain a minimum stake in the company. If that threshold breaks, the control mechanism collapses with it.

The move positions the seven founders to run Anthropic as a public company while owning a strikingly small piece of it. The co-founders reportedly own roughly 2% of the company apiece — Amodei included. All seven have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth, a commitment Amodei announced in January alongside a warning that AI-driven wealth concentration could destabilize society. The new shares carry no additional economic value. Their sole function is to preserve the group's grip on corporate decisions once the stock starts trading.

Super-voting shares are a well-worn tool in Silicon Valley. Mark Zuckerberg used them to keep control of Meta. Evan Spiegel used them to hold power at Snap. The list of founders who retained command through multi-class structures runs long. What sets Anthropic apart is the collective design. Rather than one founder consolidating authority, seven people would share a single voting bloc — a governance arrangement that spreads control across a group while still insulating it from public shareholders.

The proposal also reshapes power inside the boardroom. Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust would continue to select most of the board's members, preserving the unusual oversight structure the company built at its founding. The founders' board seats would grow from two to three. Employees would receive their own stock, giving them tie-breaking votes on certain issues — a rare concession that pushes a slice of governance below the executive suite.

The stakes are enormous. Anthropic, founded five years ago, was valued at $965 billion in May. Recent secondary-market trading has valued the company at $1.5 trillion, and its upcoming IPO is expected to price at that level. A listing near that figure would rank Anthropic among the most valuable public companies in the world and test investor appetite for a structure that leaves public buyers with minority voting power from day one.

The math explains the founders' motive. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, even a 2% stake is worth roughly $30 billion per founder. The 80% giving pledge shrinks each founder's economic exposure further over time. Without the new shares, dilution and philanthropy would steadily erode the group's influence exactly as the company faces its most scrutinized phase as a public entity.

The shareholder vote in the coming days will determine whether Anthropic's IPO follows the Meta and Snap template or breaks new ground with a founder collective holding majority voting rights. Either way, the company that warned about AI concentrating wealth is now formalizing a structure that concentrates its own governance in seven pairs of hands.