Anthropic is seeking stockholder approval to put 5% of its shares into a public benefit fund, but has yet to disclose who would oversee the fund or receive support as it prepares for a possible IPO.
Under the plan announced Oct. 18, the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund would start with a 5% stake. Anthropic’s board could assign it another 2% of shares for every 50% rise in the company’s value above a baseline that has not been disclosed.
The maker of the Claude AI assistant said the fund would be a limited liability company wholly owned by Anthropic. It could make large grants to nonprofits or pay selected groups directly. Anthropic has cited workers facing disruption from AI as potential beneficiaries, but has named no recipients or payment schedule. It said the fund’s shares would not be used for lobbying or political donations.
The proposed 5% allocation is included in the roughly 20% of company shares that Anthropic says it and its co-founders and employees would commit to public benefit. The total also counts earlier pledges, including the co-founders’ commitment to donate 80% of their own equity holdings. It could increase if the company reaches the valuation milestones in the new plan.
The fund’s structure has drawn questions about oversight. The Associated Press reported that limited liability companies face fewer disclosure requirements than charitable foundations. Ohio State University accounting chair Brian Mittendorf told the AP that payments outside conventional charity could make the fund’s public benefit harder to assess.
Anthropic has separately committed $200 million to external research on responses to AI’s economic effects. It says allocating more shares as its valuation rises would direct a greater portion of any gains toward public benefit.
OpenAI has proposed a different way to share those gains. An April policy paper described a Public Wealth Fund invested in diversified, long-term assets whose value could reflect growth in AI companies and businesses adopting the technology. Returns could be distributed to citizens, including people without financial-market investments, though the paper leaves financing to be worked out. Separately, the OpenAI Foundation said in March that it expected to invest at least $1 billion over the following year in life sciences and curing diseases, jobs and economic impact, AI resilience and community programs.
Anthropic said in June that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement for a proposed IPO. It has set no offering date, share count or price. The company says it will publish more about the fund’s governance and valuation milestones in the coming months, along with a public benefit report.
