Anthropic Pushes for Dual-Class Shares Giving Founders 50.1% Voting Control Ahead of IPO

Anthropic is asking its shareholders to approve a dual-class share structure that would hand its seven co-founders collective control of the company ahead of its planned initial public offering, according to a report from The Information carried by Investing.com and Reuters . Under the proposal, CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders would hold a special class of shares carrying a combined 50.1% of voting power on most corporate matters .

The control is not unlimited. Reuters reports the special voting class would not cover the election of Anthropic's board members, and the founders keep their majority only as long as at least three of the seven retain a minimum number of shares. Both outlets compare the design to the collective founder-control framework used by PLTR . Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The governance question matters because of the size of the listing it would sit inside. Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion in a May funding round and is reportedly targeting a valuation around $2 trillion in its IPO, whose timing Reuters says could be pushed to after the US midterm elections in November . The company counts Alphabet's Google and Amazon among its backers, which keeps the IPO relevant to GOOGL and AMZN holders as a potential mark on their stakes.

What to watch: whether existing shareholders approve the structure, how large institutional investors and proxy advisers respond to another founder-controlled mega-listing, and whether the board-election carve-out becomes the compromise that makes the terms acceptable to public-market buyers.