Anthropic Is Giving 5% of Itself to a Fund It Hasn't Finished Designing

Anthropic Is Giving 5% of Itself to a Fund It Hasn't Finished Designing

A pledge, not yet a payout

Anthropic said on Sunday that it will commit 5% of its shares to a newly created Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, an entity wholly owned inside the company. The commitment still needs stockholder approval, and no date has been set for the fund's first grants or distributions.

An LLC, not a charity

The fund will be a limited liability company rather than a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a choice Anthropic says preserves flexibility across "different forms of giving." The company also ruled out one use: none of the equity will fund lobbying or political donations, in the United States or abroad.

Shares that grow with the valuation

The structure escalates. For every 50% increase in Anthropic's value above an undisclosed baseline, the board may add another 2% of the company's shares. At the $965 billion post-money valuation from its May funding round, 5% is worth roughly $48 billion. At the $2 trillion figure floated for the IPO, it would approach $100 billion — paper value in shares, not cash on hand.

Twenty percent, all told

The fund joins older commitments. Anthropic's co-founders pledged 80% of their equity at the company's founding, and an employee matching program used by about half the staff lets workers donate stock that the company matches. Add the new 5% and roughly 20% of Anthropic's shares are earmarked for public purposes, before any milestone top-ups.

The case the company is making

Anthropic points to labor-market disruption as its example. It has already put $200 million into studying AI's effects on work, but said that "given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed," and that the fund will have room to try them. It also floated "large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations."

Timing is the tell

The announcement lands weeks before a planned IPO, possibly as soon as November, that has been pitched above $2 trillion — though Reuters reported some investors are now discussing something closer to $1.5 trillion. Third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion, up about 45% from the prior quarter. Coming into that sale, a pledge of a fifth of the company answers a specific criticism: that AI labs are capturing enormous value while displacing the workers whose data and labor made it possible.

The questions Anthropic skipped

Nobody outside the company knows who will sit on the fund's board, how recipients will be chosen, or what oversight exists beyond Anthropic's own assurances. The company said it will publish the fund's structure, governance and valuation baseline "in the coming months," along with a public benefit report. Eligibility rules and an application process have not been described.

The pushback

Elon Musk's response on X was blunt: "I recommend giving the shares directly to the public," he wrote. "This is what I will be doing." Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Anduril, said the fund's definition of public good meant helping everyone except Americans, and that it "reeks of USAID 2.0." David Sacks, a former White House technology adviser, compressed the skepticism into one line: "You've put 20% of your equity in an LLC. Whether it serves the public good remains to be seen."

Control dressed as charity

The sharpest criticism is structural. Investor Vijar Kohli argued the arrangement dilutes voting rights in advance and hands proxy power to whoever runs the fund — "more about control rather than making money." That sits on top of an existing design: per Reuters, a single Class F share carrying 50.1% of voting power is directed by the co-founders, while a long-term benefit trust elects a majority of the board.

Three things to watch

Whether stockholders approve; where the undisclosed valuation baseline is set, since it determines how large the fund can grow; and what the governance rules and first grants actually look like. Until then, 5% of Anthropic is a promise written into its cap table — not money that has reached anyone.