Anthropic was founded in 2021 to ensure humanity can control AI and benefit from it in the long-term. As the frontier lab approaches its initial public offering, however, there’s one class of humanity that is being shut out of control: anyone who buys its stock on public markets.
Complex structures that allow founders like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to control their public companies without owning most of them are nothing new in Silicon Valley. But Anthropic’s obsession with AI safety has resulted in a truly baroque style of corporate governance that will leave common shareholders with little say over most major decisions at the AI company, including who sits on its board.
First, Anthropic is a public benefit company—a for-profit corporation legally allowed to weigh a public mission alongside profit—with the goal of promoting AI safety. That status protects the board’s ability to make decisions about AI safety that aren’t driven entirely by shareholder value without being sued by angry investors.
