Anthropic's seven founders seek voting control ahead of IPO

The seven co-founders behind Anthropic are asking shareholders to approve a special share structure in the coming days that would give them 50.1% of voting power on most corporate matters, provided at least three of them maintain minimum holdings. The new shares carry no additional economic rights but would ensure the group continues to set the company's direction after it begins trading publicly.

The model echoes the dual-class shares that kept Mark Zuckerberg in control of Meta and Evan Spiegel in control of Snap, except here the control rests with a collective of seven co-founders rather than a single individual. Dario Amodei and his six colleagues currently hold roughly 2% each, and the special shares are designed to offset expected IPO dilution without granting extra economic rights.

The move follows a public pledge in January by the founders to donate 80% of their personal wealth, a step Amodei framed as a response to the risk that concentrated AI wealth could destabilize society. The approaching IPO will make their stakes liquid, and the voting structure is intended to ensure that liquidity does not come at the cost of strategic independence.

Anthropic's long-term trust will continue to appoint a majority of the board, though the founders' seats will increase from two to three. Employees will receive their own shares to serve as a tie-breaker on certain issues, a mechanism designed to counterbalance the power concentrated in the seven.

The five-year-old company was valued at $965 billion in May, and secondary-market chatter already points to a $1.5 trillion valuation that the expected IPO is meant to reflect. If shareholders approve the structure, Anthropic will go public with practical control remaining in the hands of its creators, regardless of how much capital flows in.