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

Anthropic announced a public benefit fund to support projects for societal good, saying it will commit 5% of its shares to the wholly owned entity.

The company said it could contribute an additional 2% of shares for every 50% increase in Anthropic’s value.

Anthropic said the fund would give it “increased flexibility and scale” to support public benefits. Potential uses include “large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations,” it said.

The company has already committed $200 million to study AI’s potential impact on the job market.

“Given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed. The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them,” Anthropic said.

The announcement comes amid increasingly negative public sentiment toward the AI industry, which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has described as “fundamentally a crisis of trust.”

Anthropic said it would share more information about the fund’s structure and governance in the coming months, including who will decide which public benefits receive funding.

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