Anthropic proposes IPO structure meant to limit shareholder control
Original title: Anthropic’s elaborate plan to keep Wall Street at bay
A long-term benefit trust would pick four of seven directors, while Founder LLC holds 50.1 percent of voting power.
Anthropic plans to go public as a public benefit corporation while keeping ordinary shareholders from controlling the board. Four of seven directors would be chosen by a long-term benefit trust of five financially disinterested trustees, and Founder LLC would initially hold 50.1 percent of shareholder voting power. Legal scholars told The Verge the structure can protect safety decisions from shareholder pressure, but founders still have financial stakes and markets can still influence them.
Unconfirmed: The governance plan is proposed, and scholars disagree on how fully it can insulate Anthropic from market pressure.
- CEO Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei already sit on the board.
- Founder LLC initially includes seven co-founders; cofounder Ben Mann is not among them.
- The trust uses Class T stock to appoint or remove directors.
- Sam Altman has cited investor pressure as a reason OpenAI is not pursuing an IPO this year.
From the original article
6 min read at theverge.com
Anthropic cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei. | Bloomberg via Getty Images Anthropic wants to have it both ways. With its impending IPO, it wants to tap the vast riches of the public markets and insists it doesn't want to compromise its core mission of developing AI safely and for the benefit of humanity.
By Robert Hart · theverge.com
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