Anthropic's founders hold about 2% of the stock. They want 50.1% of the votes.

The 2% that would run the company

Anthropic is asking its shareholders to approve a special class of shares that would hand its seven co-founders a combined 50.1% of the company's voting rights, according to The Information, whose report was relayed by Reuters on 24 September. The mechanism holds as long as at least three of the seven founders keep a stipulated minimum number of shares. It arrives just before what could be one of the largest technology IPOs on record.

The striking part is the gap between ownership and control. Chief executive Dario Amodei holds roughly 2% of Anthropic's stock, and his co-founders hold similar stakes. Under the proposal, that sliver of equity would carry majority command over the company's strategic direction. Anthropic has not confirmed the plan, and Reuters noted the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, so treat every figure here as reported rather than filed.

What the special shares actually do

This is a control instrument, not a payday. The new share class reportedly carries no additional economic rights, no extra dividends, nothing that pays out. It exists purely to separate who owns Anthropic from who governs it, so that future fundraising can dilute the founders' economic stake without touching their grip on decisions.

There are real limits written into the design. Board elections are the main carve-out: Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust would still appoint most of the seven-seat board, one seat of which is currently vacant, with founder director nominees rising from two to three. The company also plans to give employees a special class of stock that acts as a tie-breaker on certain deadlocked matters. So the 50.1% is majority control over "most corporate matters," not a blank cheque over everything.

The Palantir playbook, before the bell

The structure mirrors the one Palantir used to keep its founders in charge through and after its own listing. Palantir's Class F shares let its founders hold up to 49.999% of the vote; Anthropic's version reportedly spreads collective control across seven people instead of three. The timing is the tell. Founder supervoting structures are almost always locked in before an IPO, because once a company is public it is far harder to ask outside shareholders to vote away their own influence. Do it now, and every future investor buys in already knowing the founders cannot be outvoted on strategy.

For a normal software company this would be unremarkable corporate plumbing. Dual-class shares are common in tech, from Google to Meta to Palantir. What makes it a story is whose plumbing it is.

The governance question Anthropic set itself

Anthropic has spent years arguing that it is governed differently on purpose. Its Long-Term Benefit Trust, announced in 2023, was pitched as a mechanism to keep the company pointed at its mission rather than at the highest bidder, and its founders have publicly pledged to give away the bulk of their wealth. A concentration of founder voting control is not automatically in tension with that. You can argue, as Anthropic likely will, that keeping mission-aligned founders in charge is exactly how you stop an IPO from bending the company toward pure profit.

But the two things have to be read together, not separately. A structure that keeps the same Dario Amodei who argues the industry should slow down and pace the frontier in strategic control is only as reassuring as your confidence in those specific people, because the trust that was supposed to be the backstop now shares the stage with a founder bloc that cannot be outvoted. Governance that depends on the character of seven individuals is a bet, not a guarantee, and the proposal asks shareholders to make that bet permanent.

What is confirmed, and what is not

Very little of this is official. The reporting originates with The Information and has been carried by Reuters and others; Anthropic has not published a filing or confirmed the terms. The valuation context is firmer: Anthropic raised $65 billion in May 2026 at a $965 billion post-money valuation, and reporting suggests the IPO itself may slip from this month to late October or November, possibly past the US midterm elections. The voting percentages, the three-of-seven condition, and the employee tie-breaker class all come from the same reported proposal, so they stand or fall together when Anthropic files.

Our take

If the details hold, this is a company doing something ordinary in tech and unusual for itself: buying its founders permanent strategic control on the eve of going public. That is not a scandal, and dual-class structures are neither new nor illegal. It is, though, the first hard test of whether Anthropic's much-marketed governance is a principle or a brand. The honest read today is a reported proposal, not a done deal, and the number that matters is the one Anthropic has not yet had to defend in a filing: 50.1% of the votes on about 2% of the stock. Watch for the prospectus. That is where the promise meets the paperwork.