Anthropic sets aside 5% of its shares for a 'public benefit fund'
The Claude maker says the fund could make large donations or pay money directly to groups affected by AI, but has not said who will decide how it is spent.
Key points
- Anthropic will commit 5% of its shares to a wholly owned public benefit fund.
- It may add another 2% for every 50% rise in the company's value.
- Details on structure and governance will come in the coming months.
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has said it will commit 5% of its shares to a new “public benefit fund” to back projects it considers good for society.
The fund will be a wholly owned entity inside the company. Anthropic said it may contribute a further 2% of its shares for every 50% increase in its value, so the fund would grow as the company does.
The company gave only broad ideas of how the money might be used, including “large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations”. It said the structure would give it “increased flexibility and scale”.
“Given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed. The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them,” Anthropic said.
The firm has not yet said who will decide which causes the fund supports. It promised to share details of the structure and governance “in the coming months”.
The announcement builds on an earlier commitment of $200 million to study the effect of AI on the job market. Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, has previously described the backlash against AI as “fundamentally a crisis of trust”.
It also comes during a busy week for the company, which last week published research suggesting its own workforce had become less junior, and lost the coding platform Replit as a partner after Replit switched its default model to OpenAI.