The People With Power at AI Pioneer Anthropic

OpenAI isn’t the only artificial intelligence powerhouse with a peculiar governance structure. Anthropic, the Amazon- and Google-backed developer of Claude, a chatbot rival to ChatGPT, also has its quirks.

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, and some seats on its board of directors are controlled by a group called the Long Term Benefit Trust. The Trust owns special shares that allow it to select directors but do not give it any economic stake in the company. Today the Trust controls one of the board’s five seats; at an unspecified future date, it will control three, a majority. The board represents shareholders, but the Trust aims to ensure that Anthropic stays focused on “developing and maintaining advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.” To further complicate matters, an unspecified supermajority of shareholders can modify the Trust.