Anthropic Prepares Supervoting Power for Founders as it Readies for Mega-IPO

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 outside shareholder pressure, two people familiar with the matter said.

It would be the first time Anthropic’s leaders have extra voting power, which has become common practice for tech founders. It is all the more relevant for Anthropic because its co-founders hold relatively small ownership stakes in the company compared to other tech founders, another person said. The company also is planning to maintain its existing body of nonshareholder trustees with a special class of stock to elect the majority of members to the company’s board of directors, a more unconventional buffer against outside shareholder influence.