Anthropic commits shares to public benefit fund

Anthropic said it would commit 5% of its shares to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, subject to stockholder approval. It said the fund could gain another 2% for every 50% increase in the company’s value above a baseline, if the board chose to add it.

The company said much of its mission work already sat inside the business, including research on AI safety and interpretability, applied biomedical research, and discounted access to Claude for nonprofits and scientific institutions. It said those activities had both public-benefit and commercial value.

Anthropic said the new fund would give it more scope to make larger donations to established charities or to send money directly to specific groups. It cited labour-market disruption as one example, saying it had already committed $200 million to study and address that issue.

The fund would be set up as a wholly owned LLC rather than as a 501(c)(3), and Anthropic said none of the equity held by it would be used for lobbying or political donations in the US or abroad. The company said its co-founders had pledged to donate 80% of their holdings, and that about half of employees participated in an equity donation match programme.