Anthropic plans public benefit fund

Anthropic said it would commit 5% of its shares to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, subject to shareholder approval. It said a further 2% could be added for each 50% rise in the company’s value above a set baseline, at the board’s discretion.

The company said several activities with both public-benefit and commercial value would remain inside Anthropic, including work on AI safety and interpretability, applied biomedical research, and discounts on Claude for non-profits and scientific institutions. It said the new fund would give it more scope to support its mission in other ways.

Anthropic said the fund would be set up as a wholly owned limited liability company rather than a charity, so that it could move between different forms of giving. It said the equity held by the entity would not be used for lobbying or political donations in the United States or elsewhere.

The company said the structure built on earlier pledges by its co-founders and employees. It said founders had promised to give away 80% of their equity, about half of staff took part in its equity-donation match programme, and roughly 20% of shares were now dedicated to public benefit before any future milestone additions.