Anthropic says it will commit 5% of shares to ‘public benefit’ fund

Claude creator says fund could used for donations to NGOs and ‘direct distributions to specific populations’.

Anthropic has pledged to commit 5 percent of its shares to a new fund dedicated to the public good, with plans to increase the contribution as the artificial intelligence giant’s market value grows.

The creator of the AI assistant Claude announced the new “Anthropic Public Benefit Fund” on Sunday as tech firms face intense scrutiny over the potential dangers posed by the frontier technology.

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In a blog post, Anthropic said it was committing 5 percent of company shares with immediate effect, subject to stockholder approval, with an additional 2 percent to be added “at the board’s discretion” for every 50 percent increase in the company’s value.

“Because of the way the Fund is structured, the more Anthropic grows, the larger the share of the company that can be dedicated expressly to the public good,” the San Francisco-based firm said.

“It is common practice for tech companies to offer escalating compensation awards to their executives. We are instead directing that equity to the public benefit.”

Anthropic said the fund could be used to make donations to traditional nonprofits, as well as “direct distributions to specific populations”.

It said labour market disruption due to AI could be among the causes addressed by the fund.

“Anthropic has already committed $200 million to studying and addressing this issue, but given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed,” the company said.

“The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them.”