Anthropic is preparing a governance overhaul as it heads toward an initial public offering. The Information reported that the company plans to grant a class of shares carrying extra voting rights to CEO Dario Amodei and six other co-founders before the listing. If completed, it would mark the first time in Anthropic’s more than five-year history that management has held super-voting stock.
Amodei currently holds about 2% of Anthropic, according to the article. The company has not disclosed the voting multiple attached to the new shares or the size of the planned issuance. Still, the intended outcome is clear: preserve stronger founder influence after the company becomes public.
Anthropic posts higher quarterly revenue than OpenAI
The article places Anthropic and OpenAI side by side using figures from the same quarter. OpenAI posted $6.7 billion in second-quarter revenue, up from $5.7 billion in the first quarter, a sequential gain of 18%. Anthropic reported $11.6 billion for the second quarter, more than doubling from the prior quarter and sharply higher than $787 million in the same period last year.
That is the first time Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI in quarterly revenue since its founding five years ago. The same report says OpenAI’s operating loss widened from $9.3 billion to $12.3 billion over the period. Anthropic, by contrast, said its adjusted operating profit edged into positive territory.
The piece also cautions against reading the profit figures as directly comparable. It says outsiders do not have a full view of which items Anthropic excludes from its adjusted profit measure, and notes that the company has previously excluded stock-based compensation from that presentation.
Even with that caveat, the article argues that Anthropic’s pace of revenue generation and its efficiency in using compute have begun to shift how capital markets assess the relative standing of the two companies.
Annualized revenue tops $65 billion as IPO timeline speeds up
The article says Anthropic’s annualized revenue has crossed $65 billion for the first time. After a fundraising round completed in May, the company’s valuation reached $965 billion, putting it within sight of the $1 trillion mark.
With that backdrop, Anthropic has accelerated its listing plan. The article says the company confidentially filed an S-1 in June. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are listed as underwriters. Estimates for the listing date vary, with some expecting an autumn debut and others pointing to late September as a possibility.
If that schedule holds, Anthropic could reach the public market before OpenAI and become the first major frontier model company to go public in the current AI cycle.
Why control matters with only a 2% stake
As Anthropic approaches a valuation near $1 trillion, control is becoming a more visible issue. Under a standard one-share, one-vote structure, repeated fundraising, higher valuations and a broader shareholder base after listing would typically dilute founder influence.
The article frames that risk as especially acute for Anthropic because the business remains deeply capital intensive. Frontier model training, data centers, chips, electricity and inference infrastructure all require large sums of money. To keep competing with OpenAI, the company will need continued access to capital. More fundraising, in theory, means thinner ownership for founders.
That is the tension Anthropic is now trying to address: take in substantial Wall Street capital without surrendering the steering wheel. Dual-class structures are familiar in Silicon Valley and have been used by companies such as Meta and Snap. Anthropic stands out because Amodei’s disclosed ownership is only 2%.
OpenAI still holds a major distribution advantage
On the second-quarter revenue numbers alone, Anthropic comes out ahead. It posted higher revenue, faster growth and a more favorable profit picture. The article stops short, however, of declaring that the industry hierarchy has already been permanently reset.
Its reasoning is that OpenAI still controls an asset Anthropic has yet to match: a massive consumer entry point. The report says ChatGPT now has more than 1 billion users globally. Those users may be a cost center today, but they could also serve as the distribution base for search, browsers, office tools, shopping, advertising, agents and even a super app strategy later on.
The article also says OpenAI has recently been integrating Codex, ChatGPT and browser capabilities. It adds that insiders have said growth reaccelerated in the third quarter after the release of a new model, though no further figures were provided in the piece.
IPO will test both growth and founder control
Anthropic’s lead in this phase rests on a set of figures appearing at the same time: more than $65 billion in annualized revenue, a $965 billion valuation, Amodei’s roughly 2% stake and the planned addition of extra voting rights. Taken together, the article argues, those numbers show a company closer than ever to the top of the AI sector.
At the same time, super-voting rights cut both ways. In favorable conditions, markets may treat them as a sign that founders can keep making long-term decisions without being driven by quarterly earnings pressure. In a downturn, the same structure can raise a different question: if founders get a major decision wrong, how much braking power remains with outside investors?
The article makes the point that OpenAI is not out of the race. It has now been overtaken by Anthropic on revenue for the first time, its losses have widened, and it has gone through a round of management changes. Even so, it still has one of the strongest user gateways in the industry, along with access to capital, compute and product distribution.
The piece closes by highlighting three questions. Can Anthropic turn a burst of momentum around Claude Code into a commercial advantage that lasts for years? Can Amodei, with stronger control, show that founder-led governance is better suited to a trillion-dollar AI company than stricter Wall Street oversight? And when OpenAI mounts a real counterattack, will Anthropic’s current lead mark the start of a durable power shift or only a temporary change in position?
As cited in the reference section, Bloomberg published a report on Aug. 18, 2026 saying Anthropic planned to give its CEO extra voting power, citing The Information. The original Chinese article was published by the WeChat account Xinzhiyuan and credited to ASI Qishilu.