Anthropic Wants to Secure Control for Its Seven Founders Before Going Public — Media Reports
The plan is being discussed ahead of the IPO, which investors expect will value the company at around $2 trillion and raise up to $100 billion
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, along with the other co-founders, may retain control of the company after the IPO, regardless of the size of the offering / Photo: youtube.com / wef
Claude, the chatbot developer — Anthropic — has asked shareholders to approve a new corporate structure that would give CEO Dario Amodei and six other co-founders 50.1% of the voting shares, Reuters reports, citing The Information. If the co-founders act in unison, their votes will be sufficient to pass most decisions regarding the company’s management. This control mechanism does not apply to elections for members of the board of directors.
The proposed structure mirrors Palantir’s model, according to The Information. The co-founders will collectively hold a majority of the votes as long as at least three of the seven retain the specified minimum number of Anthropic shares. Employees are set to be granted a special class of stock: on certain corporate matters, this class will give them the deciding vote in the event of a tie, the publication found.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Trillions are at stake
According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic plans to go public in November, although many investors had expected the offering to take place in October. They anticipate the company will be valued at around $2 trillion and raise up to $100 billion. Some of Anthropic’s advisors believe that by that time, the company will be able to present third-quarter results confirming its strong competitive position following the September launch of OpenAI’s flagship AI model, Astra.
The success of Anthropic’s initial public offering is important not only for its management but also for tech giants such as Alphabet and Amazon, which depend on the AI company fulfilling its promise to spend more than $500 billion on computing power, Reuters notes.
OpenAI is also competing for investor capital and is in preliminary talks regarding new funding. In the previous round, the developer of ChatGPT raised more than $120 billion. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s investors fear that a comparable funding round by OpenAI right before their IPO could weaken demand for the company’s shares, the WSJ reported.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
