By Abu Sultan and Deborah Mary Sophia
Oct 19 (Reuters) - Claude developer Anthropic said on Sunday it will commit 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund to facilitate donations for the "public good," while Elon Musk pledged to give one SpaceX share to "every kid in America," arguing for such direct distributions as leading AI companies face growing public scrutiny.
AI safety concerns have multiplied following security breaches by AI systems and dire warnings from industry heads about the possibility
of severe, even existential, risks of runaway AI development in addition to public concerns about potential job losses.
Anthropic said its proposed fund would be established as a wholly owned limited liability company and would receive an additional 2% of Anthropic's shares, at the board's discretion, for every 50% increase in the company's value above a baseline that has yet to be disclosed.
The move, Anthropic said, will give it more flexibility and scale to make donations for the benefit of humanity. The company is planning one of the biggest IPOs in history as a public benefit corporation, a legal structure that requires management to balance broader public interests with profitability goals.
Musk responded to an Anthropic post on X announcing the fund by saying he recommended "giving the shares directly to the public".
"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many," Musk, who runs Anthropic rival SpaceXSI, said in a post early on Monday. He held about 6.42 billion shares in the company as of June.
SpaceX shares were up 2.5% in early trading.
The White House in July launched Trump Accounts, a cradle-to-adulthood investment program that will provide US citizens born between 2025 and 2028 a government-funded investment account of $1,000 that families can build on. Individuals and corporations can also donate equity shares to the accounts.
Many top US companies have so far pledged support for the program with employer matches or additional funding, including Dell, Visa, Micron and Delta Air Lines.
Earlier this year, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and her husband pledged a share of their SpaceX stock to each of more than two million children under the Trump Accounts investment initiative.
It was not immediately clear how Musk's donations would work, whether they would be linked to Trump Accounts and whether there would be any kind of lockup period for the shares. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for more details.
US census figures show there are 72 million children in America; if a single SpaceX share was given out to each of them at the current trading price of $149 apiece, that would be worth over $10.7 billion.
Nearly 70 million Trump Accounts have been created so far covering every American child under 18, the White House said earlier this month.
LABOR MARKET IMPACT CITED
Anthropic, which has positioned itself as a safety-first AI lab, has said AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity" and devoted roughly 80 pages of the 261-page main body of its prospectus to laying out risk factors.
The company said in its blog post its Public Benefit Fund could support initiatives including nonprofit donations, direct distributions to specific populations and efforts to address AI's impact on the labor market.
Anthropic is preparing for a market debut that could value it at roughly $2 trillion, although Reuters exclusively reported last week that some investors are weighing a lower valuation of around $1.5 trillion. That would value a 5% stake toward the fund in a range of $75 billion to $100 billion.
Anthropic cited the potential impact of AI on workers as one area of focus for the new fund, building on a previously announced $200 million commitment to study and address labor-market disruption.
Global companies have cut thousands of jobs after investing heavily in AI, with many, primarily tech firms, pointing to higher efficiencies from the technology's rapid adoption.
IMF research shows that some 40% of jobs will be either augmented, downgraded or eliminated by AI, with the number as high as 60% in advanced economies, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said last week.
NOT FOR POLITICAL GIVING
The AI giant said none of the equity held by its fund would be used for lobbying or political giving in the US or abroad.
US policymakers are weighing greater oversight of AI and companies are stepping up efforts to shape how the technology is regulated.
Combined with its co-founders' pledge to donate 80% of their equity and an employee donation matching program, roughly 20% of Anthropic's shares will be dedicated to public purposes, excluding any additional shares added later.
Anthropic said it would say more in the coming months on the fund's governance, structure and the valuation thresholds that could expand its ownership stake. It also plans to publish a public-benefit report detailing progress toward its mission.
(Reporting by Abu Sultan and Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Deborah Sophia; Editing by Edmund Klamann, Cynthia Osterman, Christian Plumb and Deepa Babington)
