Key facts
- Anthropic's seven cofounders said their pledged stock could together be worth $80 billion.
- Anthropic said it earmarked 5% of its equity for a fund devoted to the public good.
- Anthropic said it plans to set aside 2% more equity for every sustained 50% rise in its stock price.
- Anthropic said just over half its employees have pledged at least some equity, including 70% hired before May 2024.
- Bella DeVaan of the Institute for Policy Studies said the cofounders' pledges are not legally binding and can be revoked.
- Hans Peter Schmitz of North Carolina State University said the pledges struck him as reputational management.
Anthropic filed this week to go public in what could be the biggest IPO in history, and the filing set out both the AI company's finances and a series of claims about its commitment to helping others, Business Insider reported.
The company behind the AI chatbot Claude said its seven cofounders have pledged 80% of their personal stock in the startup to charitable causes, gifts that could together be worth $80 billion. Anthropic said it earmarked 5% of its equity for a fund devoted to the public good and plans to set aside another 2% for every sustained 50% rise in the company's stock price, with its IPO price as the base.
Anthropic said new employees are offered a donation match: for every share they pledge to give away to good causes, the company creates an additional share and matches the donation. Just over half of employees have pledged at least some of their equity, including 70% of those hired before May 2024 and nearly 50% of those hired after that date, the company said. Anthropic said 25% of the earlier group, offered up to a 50% match, pledged the full amount, against nearly 30% of the later group, offered a 25% match.
Anthropic also said it plans to issue Class E shares, which carry limited voting rights but no economic value, to reward tenure and charity. Employees stand to receive one share for every six months they stay at the company and one Class E share for every normal share they pledge to donate, Anthropic said. Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Dr. Vandana Arcot, founder and CEO of philanthropic strategy firm Komselj, told Business Insider by email that the plan was admirable and well-designed, and that building it into the compensation structure makes generosity the default. She said Anthropic's giving seemed grounded in an ethic of accountability rather than abundance, and cited CEO Dario Amodei's January essay saying people who get rich from AI have a responsibility to address its economic fallout, as well as Anthropic's $200 million commitment this summer to fund research on preparing people for AI's economic impacts. Arcot said her full evaluation would depend on who sits on the decision-making body, how recipients are chosen and what gets reported.
Bella DeVaan, director of the Charity Reform Initiative and deputy director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, said any efforts to center the public benefit are commendable given what she called dire wealth inequality in the US, but are no substitute for structural reform. She said the cofounders' pledges are not legally binding and can be revoked, and that voluntary efforts alone will not be sufficient to rely on.