AI major Anthropic has been preparing to give CEO Dario Amodei and other co-founders a class of stock with extra voting power to help insulate them from external shareholder pressure, as the venture nears its historic IPO.
As per the reports from the Information, Anthropic is also looking to maintain its existing body of non-shareholder trustees with a special class of stock to elect a majority of members to the company’s board of directors.
If Anthropic proceeds with the move, it would mark the first time the AI major’s leaders have extra voting power. The co-founders of Claude hold relatively small ownership stakes in the company compared to the founders of other tech firms.
Amodei himself owns only about 2% of the company, the Information said. However, it should also be kept in mind that dual-class structures aimed at giving supervoting power to leaders are common among founder-led companies and are designed to give founders greater control and insulate them from short-term shareholder pressure.
SpaceX’s dual-class structure, for instance, gives founder and CEO Elon Musk significant voting power. At Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds about 60% voting control by way of his ownership of super-voting shares.
Anthropic, preparing for its market debut, has been structured as a public benefit corporation, which is legally required to balance commercial success with social and public benefit.
The company also has a “Long-Term Benefit Trust,” an independent oversight body that exists to make sure the startup delivers on its public benefit mission.
Talking about Anthropic’s IPO, the venture’s revolving credit facility, in the lead-up to the market debut, may exceed its roughly USD 10 billion target, with Bloomberg reporting about banks jockeying for a piece of the expanded credit line, hoping the involvement will strengthen their case for a role in the IPO.
Anthropic has reportedly asked the banks most active in arranging the credit facility to commit about USD 1.25 billion each, with a second tier of active lenders encouraged to offer around USD 1 billion. Commitments for less active roles would fall to about USD 750 million or less.
While the talks are ongoing, Anthropic could decide to limit the size of the revolver to the target or even below. The startup is even projecting its 2028 revenue to be roughly USD 190 billion to USD 200 billion.