Seven people, each holding roughly 2% of Anthropic, want 50.1% of the vote. That’s the proposal Anthropic plans to put in front of shareholders “in the coming days,” according to The Information, and it would keep the company’s founders in charge after it goes public.
CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders would receive special shares. Together, those shares would carry 50.1% of the vote on most corporate matters. There’s one condition: at least three of the founders must keep a minimum stake.
A familiar trick, played as a team
Super-voting shares aren’t new. Mark Zuckerberg used them to keep control of Meta (official site). Evan Spiegel used them to hold on to Snap. The list of founders who’ve done this is long.
What’s different here is the group. The usual setup protects one founder. Anthropic’s version spreads control across seven people and only needs three of them to stay invested for it to hold.
Why the founders need the extra votes
The math explains it. The seven co-founders reportedly own just 2% of the company each, Amodei included. On ownership alone, they couldn’t control a public company.
They’ve also pledged to give away 80% of their wealth. Amodei announced that commitment in January, along with a warning that AI-driven wealth concentration could destabilize society. So their stakes will likely get smaller over time.
The new shares carry no extra economic value. They don’t make the founders any richer. What they do is keep the group in control once Anthropic’s stock starts trading.
The fine print complicates the power grab
This isn’t a clean takeover by the founders. Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust would still choose most of the board. The founders’ board seats would grow from two to three, which is a gain but not a majority.
Employees get a piece of this too. They’d receive their own class of stock, which would be used to break ties on some issues. It’s an odd three-way arrangement, and how often those tiebreakers come into play will matter more than the headline 50.1% figure.
The stakes are measured in trillions
Anthropic is five years old. It was valued at $965 billion in May. It has since been valued at $1.5 trillion on the secondary market, and its upcoming IPO is expected to reflect that new valuation.
At that size, even a small slice of voting control is worth fighting over. Public investors in Meta and Snap accepted founder control and kept buying the stock.
Before you buy Anthropic shares on day one, read the voting structure. Owning the stock won’t give you much say in how the company is run. For now, seven founders, a trust and the employees’ tiebreaking shares split most of that.
