Anthropic IPO filing excludes Ben Mann from founder voting group
A single Class F share will carry 50.1% of shareholder voting power, with seven co-founders deciding how it is voted.
Ben Mann will have no part in directing Anthropic’s founder-controlled voting share after its public offering, according to the company’s S-1 prospectus filed on 26 October. Mann co-leads Anthropic Labs, but is excluded from the Founder LLC that will hold the share.
A footnote identifies Mann as someone frequently described as a co-founder and says he has been with Anthropic since its January 2021 founding. It nevertheless excludes him from other co-founder references in the prospectus. An Anthropic spokesperson told the San Francisco Standard, which reported the omission, that Mann’s role had not changed and that describing him as a co-founder remained fair.
The Founder LLC’s single Class F share will account for 50.1% of shareholder voting power. Decisions on its vote will rest with seven co-founders: Daniela Amodei, Dario Amodei, Jack Clark, Tom Brown, Christopher Olah, Jared Kaplan and Sam McCandlish.
Anthropic used the co-founder designation for Mann when announcing its Singapore office opening on 14 October, the Standard noted. He jointly leads the company’s experimental Labs arm with Mike Krieger, an Instagram co-founder.
The LLC agreement also allows each of the seven founders to nominate up to 10 successors in ranked order, subject to approval from five of the remaining six founders. Both the names and their ranking must remain confidential. The board’s nominating and governance committee may request reconsideration of a list, but its request has only advisory status.
