Anthropic commits to putting 5% of shares into a "public interest" fund

Anthropic announced it will put 5% of its shares into a new public interest fund, worth about $48 billion based on the company's latest $965 billion valuation, subject to shareholder approval. The fund is a wholly owned limited liability company and will support work such as AI safety and biomedical research, and may explore large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific groups of people. Anthropic also plans to add 2% of shares each time the company's valuation rises 50% above an undisclosed baseline, and said that after the announcement about 20% of shares will be used for public purposes. The move comes as it prepares for an IPO at a valuation of about $2 trillion and faces public backlash over AI's impact on jobs and risk of loss of control; OpenAI also discussed this summer giving about 5% of its shares to the public. The company also proposed a draft AI safety and security bill to U.S. lawmakers, and its head of federal affairs said the proposal is still a draft and is seeking feedback.