Anthropic is asking shareholders to approve a special class of shares that would give its seven co-founders a combined 50.1% of the vote on most corporate matters, The Information reported, according to TechCrunch and The Next Web.
Each co-founder, including chief executive Dario Amodei, holds roughly 2% of the company's shares, and the new voting shares would carry no additional economic value, TechCrunch reported. The structure requires that at least three of the seven founders keep a minimum stake for the control to remain in force.
The founders would also gain a third board seat, up from two, though Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust would still select most directors, according to both outlets. Anthropic plans to give employees a separate share class that can act as a tiebreaker on certain votes.
Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in a May funding round and has traded as high as $1.5 trillion on secondary markets since, The Next Web reported. Amodei has said all of Anthropic's co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth.
Founder super-voting structures are common enough at Meta and Snap, but a control bloc split across seven people rather than concentrated in one is not. It signals Anthropic's leadership wants its direction locked in before public shareholders get a vote, not after.