Anthropic’s founders seek voting control ahead of IPO

In Brief Posted: 8:40 AM PDT · September 25, 2026 Image Credits:Samyukta Lakshmi/Bloomberg / Getty Images Connie Loizos Anthropic’s founders seek voting control ahead of IPO Anthropic’s founders want to stay in charge after the company goes public. According to The Information, the company is…

In Brief Posted: 8:40 AM PDT · September 25, 2026 Image Credits:Samyukta Lakshmi/Bloomberg / Getty Images Connie Loizos Anthropic’s founders seek voting control ahead of IPO Anthropic’s founders want to stay in charge after the company goes public. According to The Information, the company is asking shareholders to approve a structure “in the coming days” that would give CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders special shares carrying a combined 50.1% of the vote on most corporate matters, as long as at least three of them keep a minimum stake. This isn’t a new idea; super-voting shares are how Mark Zuckerberg kept control of Meta, and how Evan Spiegel maintained his hold of Snap. The list is long. What’s unusual is the group approach. Why do it? The seven co-founders reportedly own just 2% of the company apiece, Amodei included, and have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth, a commitment the CEO announced in January alongside a warning that AI-driven wealth concentration could destabilize society. The new shares carry no extra economic value, but they’d preserve the group’s control once the company starts trading publicly. There are twists, too: Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust would still choose most of the board; the founders’ board seats would grow from two to three; and employees would get their own stock to break ties on some issues. Five-year-old Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in May. The company was recently valued at $1.5 trillion on the secondary market, and its upcoming IPO is expected to reflect that new valuation. Topics AI, Anthropic, In Brief, IPO October 13 – 15 San Francisco Your next big connection is at Disrupt.Connect with 10,000+ founders, VCs, operators, and tech leaders. Explore tomorrow’s breakthroughs, hear what’s shaping tech today, and save up to $200 by Sept. 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. BOOK NOW Newsletters See More Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Related AI Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal Aditya Mehta 10 hours ago AI Astra and Opus just passed Turing’s other test Tim Fernholz 12 hours ago AI ElevenLabs’ CEO on margins, IPO timing, and telling customers they’re talking to a bot Connie Loizos 2 days ago Latest in AI Hardware At Meta Connect, the company’s smart glasses were everywhere Lucas Ropek 4 hours ago AI Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers Kirsten Korosec 6 hours ago AI Unsecured OpenAI agents posted 53 user images on the internet without the lab’s knowledge Tim Fernholz 7 hours ago

Source: TechCrunch — Published September 25, 2026 at 15:40 UTC — Category: Business