Following up on my blog from a few days ago about how “How Investors Should Evaluate AI Proxy Voting Solutions,” here’s an interesting note posted by Pennant AI’s Ryan Nowicki Stewart on LinkedIn:
“Welcome to the proxy voting party, Andreessen Horowitz. Back in February, we at Pennant AI noted “AI” might now be the “Activist Investor” after launching Governance Arena. Fast forward to the latest “a16z Charts of the Week,” which could have been pulled straight from our pitch deck.
The data: frontier AI models weighed in on ~50 recent proxy fights. They favored activists 45% of the time, higher than ISS (36%) and Glass Lewis (42%). But actual shareholder votes only go the activist’s way 14% of the time.
Three data points that track with what we’ve been building toward:
1. AI can credibly reason on governance and proxy voting. That’s the premise behind Governance Arena, our free benchmark stress-testing frontier LLMs on real proxy scenarios.
2. The 40-year duopoly of influence is cracking. Proxy advisor dissident recommendations are up ~2.5x while their “success” rate dropped by a third. As we note below, there is more to this story.
3. Large asset managers are voting their own policies. The article points to the Big Three, but plenty more investors beyond BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Investment Management make their own voting calls, especially in proxy contests. And many mid- and smaller-size institutional investors would too if given better tools.
This is the space Pennant AI is built for.
Three points I would stress test:
1. “AI favors activists 45%” is the wrong scoreboard. What matters is whether AI can faithfully reflect your firm’s voting policy, view and voice. An agent tuned for a long-horizon index steward might vote differently from one tuned for an event-driven fund. Default settings produce default answers, and investors’ unique voices deserve better.
2. The piece treats the Big Three voting with management, despite advisor recommendations, as a governance puzzle. I’d argue it’s the answer. Investors taking their vote back is the value unlock Pennant delivers across the share register.
3. The 14% activist vote-win rate misses where most modern activism actually lands – the settlement table. 92% of activist board seats in H1 2025 came via settlement in ~16.5 days on average. As more investors stop outsourcing judgment to the advisors, vote considerations, settlement negotiations and engagement tactics will shift for activists and the companies they target.
Every investor owning their voice, view, and vote, with AI as the leverage. As a former institutional proxy voter, that’s the power I would have wanted for my clients, and the future we’re building toward.”
