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Devina Mehra @devinamehra原推发布于 2026.10.01

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We are convinced that we are not those idiots who will fall for the absurd bubbles and manias that we read about. Imagine paying several months' income for a tulip during the Tulip mania or buying a company which has not even specified what it does during the South Sea bubble. The point is: Are we really so sure? 🤔 Anthropic, one of the top AI companies is about to go public and is planning to raise 100 billion US dollars, topping even the 85.7 billion dollars raised by Elon Musk's Space X What both these IPOs have in common, among others, is special class shares. The Anthropic founders with only 14% of the shareholding are granting themselves majority voting rights through a special class of shares. Have we seen this movie before? The US dual class shares reached a peak during the 1920s boom when family businesses went public while keeping the rights within the family. And we know how that boom ended (in a decades-long stock market crash and the Great depression). These were then banned outright by 1940 by the New York Stock Exchange. This mechanism was reinstated in the 1980s but the current boom mostly goes back to the Google/ Alphabet listing in 2004 which had a system to preserve founder control. This template was then followed by many others in tech like Facebook/Meta. About 25 to 30% of recent IPOs in the US have featured dual class shares. The SpaceX IPO was also not just about the valuation - it was about having near zero corporate governance and shareholder rights! Essentially giving your money and handing over the keys to Elon Musk to do as he pleases with it - whether on his own compensation, dilutive shareholding or merging with his private companies. There is practically NOTHING outside shareholders can do! And also the business of the company was to find "new trillion dollar opportunities" - meaning the money was being raised for unknown uses. This was something I wrote about in Mint a few months ago The Anthropic founders are doing pretty much the same with even lower shareholding. Also to be highlighted that among the risks in the prospectus is that what they build can cause the end of humanity but we are supposed to trust the founders to look after the interests of all of us!! imagine how it will read in a economic history book: That in 2026, investors were willing to give hundreds of billions of dollars in Investments without even voting rights 😉😀 So are we really as smart as we think we are? @livemint @firstglobalsec #AI #IPO