Anthropic pledges 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund

Anthropic is putting 5% of its shares into a new entity, the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, and that stake can grow along with the company. For every 50% increase in Anthropic’s value above a set baseline, the board can add up to another 2%. Anthropic announced the fund on October 18 in a post on Anthropic’s site. The first 5% still needs stockholder approval.

Anthropic says that, once its co-founders’ and employees’ existing pledges are added in, roughly 20% of its shares are committed to the public good. That figure does not include any extra percentage the fund could get if the company reaches its valuation milestones.

The earlier pledges date back to the company’s founding. At that point the co-founders pledged to donate 80% of their equity holdings. Anthropic has also run an equity donation match ever since: employees pledge equity, and the company matches it. About half of its employees take part.

Anthropic compares the growing stake to executive pay. “It is common practice for tech companies to offer escalating compensation awards to their executives,” the post says. “We are instead directing that equity to the public benefit.” Because of how the fund is structured, the more Anthropic grows, the larger the share of the company that can go to it. The 2% additions don’t happen automatically, though. The board decides on each one.

Most of what Anthropic counts as mission work stays inside the company. That includes research on AI safety and interpretability, applied biomedical research, and discounts on Claude for nonprofits and scientific institutions. Anthropic says this work serves the public and also has commercial value, so it keeps it in-house. It says the fund will have more flexibility and scale than the company. The examples it gives are large donations to traditional nonprofits and direct distributions to specific populations.

One example Anthropic gives is the labor market. It says AI may generate enormous economic value but could also cause instability for many workers. It has already committed $200 million to studying and addressing that, “but given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed,” the post says. The fund will have the versatility to pursue them.

Anthropic says it will share more about the fund’s structure and governance in the coming months, including the valuation milestones that could add to its stake. It also plans an upcoming public benefit report on its progress against its mission.

The fund is a wholly owned LLC. Anthropic chose that over a 501(c)(3), the usual US form for tax-exempt charities, and says the LLC lets it move between different forms of giving. One limit is set from the start: none of the Anthropic equity the LLC holds will be used for lobbying or political giving, in the US or abroad.